In The Hands Of A Child
by Kryschenn
Summary: Complete rewrite, October 2012. Four years after the Young Ones have returned home, the cosmos aligns and Venger has the chance to conquer the Realm. Needing only an artifact that was sent to Earth with the Young Ones to complete his plan, and he will stoop to any level to get it.
1. Chapter 1

_Important Disclaimer Stuff: Dungeons and Dragons the Cartoon, were originally copyright TSR/Marvel Productions, and then Saban Entertainment, BCI Eclipse, and rumor has it, Disney. Copyrighted characters are being used without permission, but with love and the best of intentions. All other characters are straight out of the Author's somewhat warped imagination. I am not making any money from the writing or publication of this story. (I wish!) Is that enough for the Lawyers?_

_Thank yous: When this story was first written in 2001, I had so much help and so many good ideas from my beta reader, Cole del Tigre, that I should really credit him as my co-author. Ten years later I'd learned so much more about writing that I decided to rewrite this story, and in that rewrite, I must also thank my friend John S. for the encouragement and for being my second beta reader (making him a delta reader, I suppose). Also, a very special thank you goes to Model Builder, whose insights from the perspective of a caseworker have helped me to paint what I believe is a more realistic picture in the first couple of chapters._

**In the Hands of a Child**

**O.O.O**

A typical spring day such as this could have happened anywhere. Freshly blooming flowers and green, vibrant grasses lent their delicate scents to the afternoon air, already perfumed by a refreshing rain. Overhead, birds chirped and warbled their happiness now that the brief shower had passed and the clouds were parting. Prism-like droplets of rain sparkled in rainbow hues as they hung from the edges of leaves budding on trees lining a quiet street in this small town.

Thirty seconds after the sound of the school bus pulled away from the curb, the front door flung open with a bang, and into the house bounced an exuberant, freckled six-year-old who had been missing her front teeth for two weeks now, her dark-blondish pigtails swinging as she skipped into the living room. "Mommy!" she called, flinging her Tigger backpack onto the couch, scattering the accent pillows, and heading for the kitchen where she knew her after-school milk and cookies would be waiting.

"There you are, sweetheart," her mother exclaimed, sweeping the little girl up in a big hug before she had the chance to pounce on the Oreos. "How was school today?" she asked, adjusting the phone book "booster seat" as her daughter climbed into her favorite bar stool at the kitchen counter.

"Mthth. Winchell made uth practith our capitalth and lower cathe letterth," the girl explained with difficulty, since it was hard to talk when one was missing two front teeth, and even worse when one's mouth was stuffed full of milk and Oreos. "Then we did our pluth and minuthes and we did crayoning," she said, spluttering cookie crumbs everywhere in her excitement to talk about her day. It seemed like her mother's admonitions about not talking with her mouth full just weren't getting drilled into her cute little head. "And Billy Carroll threw part of his sandwich at me at lunch so I pushed him in the mud at recess!"

"Caitlin!" her mother said in surprise.

"It's okay, Mommy, I sneaked up on him and he didn't see me 'cause I ran away before he got up," the girl called Caitlin explained with six-year-old confidence and with a mouth that was, thankfully, not full of cookies for the first time in the conversation.

Her mother groaned slightly.

Caitlin seemed to understand that her mother was less than pleased with the news. "'Just wait 'til Daddy gets home?'" she parroted, obviously having heard that phrase on more than one similar occasion in her young life. It always seemed to fall to Daddy to mete out punishment in these situations.

Her mother shook her head. "I have a feeling Daddy's only going to laugh at that one," she sighed. Of course he'd laugh. Caitlin was a bit of a tomboy, that was certain, and though he'd never admit it, her father was secretly proud of that fact. But still, tomboy or no, they'd have to have a stern talk with their daughter later. "Finish your cookies, and I'm going to go change my clothes. Then show me what you did at school today."

By the time her mother had changed out of her nurse's aide's uniform that she wore while working part time while her daughter was in school, Caitlin had polished off the last of her milk and was now rummaging through her backpack. "See, Mommy? These are my plusses and minuses and I got ten out of twelve right!" she said proudly, handing her mother a scribbled-on and slightly wadded sheet of paper. "And Mrs. Winchell read us a fairy tale and then she told us to draw a knight or a princess or a monster or a castle, and I crayoned this!" she said with excitement, holding up the next art project for the refrigerator. "And this is my letters, I did the whole alphabet in capitals and lower cases."

_RRRRRRIP_ went the piece of paper as it caught on something in the backpack.

"Um, can you glue that?" Caitlin asked sheepishly.

"I'll get some tape, honey," her mother said absently. The sound of the tearing paper had barely caught her attention. At the moment, all she could do was stare, dumbstruck, at the crayon drawing that the child had handed her. No. This wasn't possible.

"Wait 'til Daddy gets home, indeed," she muttered to herself.

**O.O.O**

As usual, Daddy was home just a couple hours later. "I'm home-" he began to call out as he stepped in the front door, a call which quickly turned into, "_OOOF_!" as Caitlin, seemingly appearing from out of nowhere, exuberantly launched herself squarely into his stomach with a gleeful, "Daddy!" This greeting was a nightly ritual which often was much worse on her father when she was a little shorter.

"And how's my little Katie today?" her father asked once he'd caught his breath again, scooping her up in his arms and giving her a big kiss on the cheek.

Caitlin immediately commenced with the Billy Carroll story again, though it became decidedly more embellished with this telling. As she jabbered on, her father carried her into the dining room, where her mother was finishing setting the table for dinner. He was indeed snickering at the story as he leaned over to give his wife a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm glad you're home," she said with some degree of urgency. He immediately registered the concern in his wife's voice as she interrupted the story to instruct their daughter, "Caitlin, honey, go wash your hands, dinner's almost ready."

"Okay!" Caitlin agreed, bouncing out of the room with as much energy as a small tornado.

As soon as Caitlin was out of earshot, her father asked, "Something wrong?"

"I want you to look at something," her mother explained, picking up the piece of kid-art from the top of the refrigerator. "Their teacher told them to draw something from a fairy tale today. She did this."

Though it was done in a childish hand, the crayon depiction of a winged, lizard-like body was clearly that of a dragon. A dragon with five colorful heads sprouting from its red body: a red head, a black one, an outlined one that was probably supposed to be white, a blue one, and a green one.

Tiamat.

Hank looked at Sheila in alarm. "You don't think she remembers, do you?"

**O.O.O**

Two days later, first grade teacher Mrs. Winchell had a parent-teacher conference immediately after school with Mrs. Grayson, the mother of Caitlin, the sweet, if overly energetic, little girl who sat in the third row, two desks back. The little girl in question was now sprawled on the floor in the play area of the otherwise deserted classroom, cheerfully running over the Barbie dolls with the Tonka Dump Truck as she waited for her mother to show up for the conference. Mrs. Winchell frowned slightly as she glanced at her student, wondering what this meeting would be about. Caitlin was a good student, reasonably bright, and though she was a constant explosion of energy, she had no real discipline problems that were out of the ordinary. No one habitually picked on Caitlin that she knew of, and Mrs. Winchell was usually very aware of conflicts between her students. To her knowledge, nothing was wrong with Caitlin's overall school experience. She couldn't fathom the urgency with which Mrs. Grayson had phoned her yesterday to schedule a conference.

A slight tap at the open door made Mrs. Winchell flinch. The old hallway was perfect for echoing even the slightest footsteps, but she could have sworn that she hadn't heard a sound of anyone approaching. And yet there was a slim, petite figure standing in the door that proved to the teacher that maybe it was time for a hearing checkup.

"Mrs. Winchell? I'm Sheila Grayson."

"Mommy!" Caitlin exclaimed, tossing Barbie head-first into the Tonka Cement Mixer and jumping up to run to her mother as if she hadn't seen her in years.

"Hi, sweetheart," Sheila greeted her daughter, before gently disentangling her leg from the big bear-hug that Caitlin was giving it. "Okay, honey, let go ... there." Succeeding in prying the girl off, Sheila knelt down eye-level with her and asked, "Will you go back and play with the dolls again for a few minutes? Mrs. Winchell and I need to talk. Then we'll get ice cream and go home, okay?"

"Okay!" Caitlin sang happily. Such a reward was every child's dream, especially when all she had to do to earn it was go play! Bouncing back to the play area, she flopped down and immediately wreaked bodily havoc on Barbie with a dozen or so building blocks.

As this happened, an amused Mrs. Winchell quietly sized Mrs. Grayson up, trying to determine what kind of parent she was, as she naturally did whenever she met one of her students' family. She had encountered Mrs. Grayson and her husband only once before, during new student orientation at the beginning of the year. It struck her now, as it had then, that she was rather young to have a six-year-old daughter. Mrs. Grayson could not have been more than twenty-three or twenty-four at the most, meaning that she was probably still in high school when she'd had Caitlin. Sadly, that happened with alarming frequency these days, but to the Graysons' credit, they were lovingly raising their daughter remarkably well, and from what Caitlin said when she talked about her mommy and daddy, they seemed absolutely devoted to her.

The Graysons, a child born to too-young parents ... wait a second. Now Mrs. Winchell was beginning to put two and two together. Upon reflecting for a moment, she thought she remembered hearing a rumor from some of her colleagues in the high school district, a rumor about something that had happened the year before she had been hired on by the elementary school. She was certain about the part that had made national news: several children from their area had mysteriously disappeared a few years ago, and that little tickle at the back of her brain was telling her that one of them had the last name of Grayson, or something similar. Trying hard to remember, she vaguely recalled hearing whispers that when the children, now mostly adults, had reappeared, the unsolved mystery pointed to a mysterious kidnapping by an elusive cult. The students were abducted, taken somewhere in Canada with drug-induced amnesia, and brainwashed for years by the cult leader, and, in the middle of this all, a child - Caitlin? - was born.

Unfortunately, she'd overheard the rumors only once or twice before, and until now had no reason to associate it with Caitlin's parents. Mrs. Winchell had only bits and pieces, and was fairly certain she did not know the whole story. She had to admit that she was not even sure this was the same Grayson that had been mentioned in the news.

What mattered at the moment, though, was the fact that a parent was very concerned about her child. "What can I do for you, Mrs. Grayson?"

"For starters, call me Sheila," the slim redhead smiled, taking the chair that the teacher gestured to. "I came here because I was wondering if you could tell me anything about this?" Opening a folder that she had carried in, Sheila showed the teacher the picture that Caitlin had brought home two days ago.

"This?" Mrs. Winchell echoed, faintly surprised as she glanced over the picture of the dragon. She had remembered telling Caitlin how realistic it looked. What about it was upsetting Caitlin's mother? Once before, a parent had reacted badly to a child's drawing of a dragon, coming to a parent-teacher conference with near-hysterical fears that her boy was either mentally deranged, or possessed by devils. That didn't seem to be what was concerning Mrs. Grayson, but just in case, Mrs. Winchell proceeded carefully, "It's nothing to be overly alarmed about, Mrs. Gr – I mean, Sheila. The assignment was to draw something from the fairy tales we were reading, and this is the dragon that Caitlin came up with."

"That's what she told me," Sheila agreed, putting the paper back in the folder. Even with that admission, though, the concern was not gone from her blue-green eyes. "But, doesn't a five-headed dragon seem a bit bizarre to you?"

Though the teacher got the distinct impression that Caitlin's mother was dancing around an issue that she would not voice, she began to relax. This wasn't a crisis, just a minor, easily remedied misunderstanding. "Your daughter has a vibrant and very active imagination, as I'm sure you know. Just last week she was telling the other children about a giant lobster that no one else can see, which lives under her bed. It's standard stuff for children her age. They'll outgrow it."

Sheila smiled, having heard the story about the lobster, too. That was Caitlin's version of the Monster That Lived Under Every Kid's Bed. In truth, Sheila even suspected it stemmed from a very early mispronunciation of the word "monster." It seemed perfectly normal, the way Mrs. Winchell put it.

"I wouldn't be concerned -" the teacher continued, but was interrupted when a freckled, red-haired Midge doll was shoved in her face.

"See!" Caitlin bubbled. "I told you Mommy looks like Midge does!"

"Yes, I see that," Mrs. Winchell agreed, gently pushing Barbie's friend to the side. "But your mother and I are still talking, so you just play for a little longer, all right?"

"Okay!" Caitlin obediently skipped back to where she had been playing, sat down and started dressing Midge in Barbie's hot pink party dress.

"So, she doesn't do stuff like this often?" Sheila asked hopefully as her daughter distracted herself, tapping the folder which contained the unmistakable likeness of Tiamat.

"Well, I wouldn't say that," Mrs. Winchell admitted. "She's quite the storyteller. I wouldn't be concerned, though. As I was saying, most of it is quite normal for a child her age. But I might recommend having a little talk with her about exaggerating," she added after a moment.

"How so?" Sheila asked with a frown.

"Well, for instance," Mrs. Winchell began, thinking of a few appropriate examples of some of the rather tall tales that Caitlin had regaled her classmates with. As the teacher related them, most seemed like standard fare for children who were trying to impress their peers so much that a few points would take on an extremely high polish, such as the secret 'pirate cave' loaded with treasure that she had discovered at the beach last summer, which, upon further questioning, turned out to be just a twenty-foot round hollow in a rock just above the high-tide line. The treasure, of course, had been nothing more than a pocket full of quartz-veined granite.

Just when Sheila was finally relaxing in her seat, as if she had admitted to herself that there really was nothing out of the ordinary with her daughter, Mrs. Winchell concluded with one last example. "Then a few weeks ago, I read to them the story of Robin Hood," she explained. "Later, I heard her telling some of the other children that her father was better with the bow and arrow than Robin Hood was, and he always shot arrows that were on fire. I asked her if she was telling the truth, and she promised she was. It seemed, well, a bit of an exaggeration, and usually I can get her to admit it when it is, but this time she was adamant about it being the truth. So I'm curious, is it true, Mrs. Grayson? Is your husband into archery or something?"

Sheila turned several degrees of pale at this revelation.

"He ... he used to be," she finally managed. The description was somewhat inaccurate, but it was more than obvious what Caitlin was remembering. Trying to invent a logical explanation, despite how stunned she was, Sheila came up with, "He used to ... to do trick archery before she was born and when she was still very little. I The flaming arrows and all I'm surprised she remembers."

"You'd be surprised at the memory on some children," Mrs. Winchell began, but before she could finish her sentence, she was again interrupted by Caitlin and the Midge doll.

"Look!" Caitlin insisted, displaying a doll that was now dressed not only in Barbie's short, pink party dress, but also Barbie's equestrian riding boots. In Caitlin's other hand was the purple scarf that she had somehow snitched from around the collar of Mrs. Winchell's coat that was draped over the back of her chair. "Watch!" she said, tossing the scarf over Midge. In a six-year-old's attempt at being sneaky, she slid the doll out from under the scarf before lifting the rectangle of silk again. "Midge can disappear! Just like Mommy!"

"Just like Mommy?" the teacher repeated, looking at Sheila curiously while putting her hand out to Caitlin. "Well ... that's a very good trick. Now would you give me my scarf back, please?"

Sheila did not immediately answer. All the color had drained from her face, leaving her freckles standing out in stark contrast with her sudden whiteness. For a moment, all she could do was stare at the purple scarf that the teacher was patiently trying to reclaim from her student. "Uh ..." she stammered, thinking as fast as humanly possible, considering the shock. "A friend of ours does magic tricks. He he did some for her birthday. I um ... I was his assistant and he made me disappear."

"I see," Mrs. Winchell nodded while gazing intently at Sheila. Clearly, something was very wrong, something that she knew Sheila was lying about in a poor but desperate attempt to cover, but what in the world that could be, she hadn't a clue. Before she could ask, Sheila was on her feet and taking her daughter by the hand.

"Come on, sweetheart, grab your backpack, we need to get home before Daddy does," she babbled hastily. "Mrs. Winchell, thank you for your time!" With her child in tow, she ducked out of the room before another word could be said.

"I want chocolate chip!" echoed Caitlin's voice in the hallway, determined to not let her mother forget for a second that she'd been promised ice cream.

**O.O.O**

At exactly four minutes past Caitlin's bedtime that evening, Sheila emerged from her daughter's bedroom and said, "She's conked out." As usual, by the end of the day, their little whirlwind of a daughter sorely needed to recharge her batteries and was fast asleep by the time Sheila had read the first few pages of her bedtime story. Caitlin probably knew the beginning part to a hundred or so different stories, but Sheila seriously doubted her daughter had a clue how any of them actually ended.

"Okay, good," was the half-aware answer to her announcement.

Sitting down on the sofa, Sheila noticed Hank's thoughtful, concerned expression as he mulled over a clearly weighty issue. There could be no doubt what that issue was, since he'd been like this from the moment she'd told him about the parent-teacher conference earlier that afternoon. She waited quietly for him to tell her what conclusions he was arriving at, if any.

A few silent minutes passed. When Sheila finally decided that Hank was so lost in his thoughts that he was going to need prompting if there was to be a conversation, she asked, "Which is worse? Knowing that Caitlin remembers the Realm, or thinking that we had our heads in the sand and missed this altogether?"

Hank looked up quickly, obviously disturbed by the implication that they hadn't been paying close attention to their own child. "I honestly don't think she's ever let on that she remembered before, at least not in front of us," he said after a moment, sounding as if he was asking Sheila to confirm this. That very question had wracked both their minds this entire evening: Had she exhibited these memories at any time before, and they just missed it? "Because if she had, I don't think for a second that either of us would have just laughed it off and hoped that if we ignored it, it would go away. I mean, look at all the alarm bells this is setting off now! There's no doubt in my mind that we would've picked up even the slightest hint that she remembered, and we sure wouldn't have let it slide if we had!"

"But it's pretty clear she remembers, and I know she wasn't purposely hiding it," Sheila answered, shrugging helplessly. "If she had been, she would have never shown me that drawing like that, don't you think? I just don't know how we could have missed this."

Sheila leaned quietly against Hank's shoulder as they turned over a few possibilities in their minds. Why did this have to happen now? They were just getting their lives back in order and finally writing off their experiences in the Realm as a closed, locked, and sealed chapter in their lives. These past years had been a more strenuous blur than surviving in the Realm: trying to explain their over three year absence as a complicated kidnapping plot, while misdirecting the police so that the "case" would eventually be tossed to the bottom of a filing drawer as unsolvable; reacquainting themselves with their parents who understandably tried to probe into the past of the children they had believed to be dead; explaining Caitlin's presence; getting their GED's and then the training to find real jobs in the real world to become normal, productive citizens and care for their child as best they could, as if nothing were wrong.

Of course, it hadn't been all stress and lies since their return, not by a long shot. Being back on Earth put them back in a familiar environment where they weren't constantly on the run, always looking over their shoulders to avoid being blasted, eaten, captured, roasted, poisoned, or frozen. Still, it was intense culture shock, going from their positions of helping govern Khadish as legitimate and accepted heirs to Rahmoud's kingdom, to being little more than high-school dropouts with limited prospects of a future. After that very rough transition back, in which Hank and Sheila had nearly split up more than once, things eventually started going their way again. Hank had the wherewithal and the nearly incalculable luck to land an on-site handyman position in a townhouse complex, a job which offered an adequate paycheck and, more importantly, extremely affordable housing. Sheila had fought her way into college and was now only a couple dozen credit hours away from getting her Nursing certificate. They were finally living fairly well and relatively happily, given the circumstances, and they both knew it was a combination of hard work, sheer luck, stubborn determination, more hard work, and maybe a little divine providence that had gotten them to this point. It wasn't impossible, but they both knew the odds against a pair of teenaged parents sticking together and making it work this successfully were more than a thousand to one.

Once their lives started falling into place, they were finally able to have a real wedding to make things official and legitimate in the eyes of their families and the law, despite the fact that they had already been married in the eyes of Rahmoud and the Realm since a few months before Caitlin was born. They knew they had friends here they could rely on, all of whom shared the same experiences during "that time." Even though they had to keep the Realm a secret from the world, they still had people they could talk to. Plus, on top of it all, Caitlin was the sweetest, smartest, most wonderful child they could have ever dreamed of having. She made everything else worth the struggle.

But why did she have to remember the fact that she was not born here on Earth?

Sighing in resignation, Hank finally patted Sheila's leg and said, "The funny thing is, she could have been telling her classmates everything she remembered about the Realm all last year, and we never knew because the kindergarten teacher might have just laughed the whole thing off as so many kid's stories. How's that for crazy?" He shook his head in disbelief, while Sheila managed a wan smile at the thought. "But whether we missed it before or not, that's beside the point now. I can't even begin to understand how she remembers, I mean, she wasn't even two when we got out of there! But I guess what it comes down to is, what do we do about it?"

"Telling her not to talk about it would only make the problem worse," Sheila offered as one thing _not _to do, whether she was talking about Caitlin or any other six-year-old in existence. "Because then it would be a secret, and you know how long secrets last around first-graders!"

Chuckling, Hank nodded once. Half the neighborhood would hear all the details within two days if they told Caitlin to keep it secret. So that idea was out. But what could they do that _would_ have some effect?

Absently stroking Sheila's long red hair as she rested her head tiredly on his shoulder, Hank finally admitted, "I'm drawing a total blank. But let's face it, this is too big for just us."

Sheila nodded. It had been agreed, several years ago, that if any issues arose involving the Realm, they were to be solved by a group effort. So that was the next step. "War council protocols?" she asked with a faint smile.

"Yep," Hank agreed. Reaching for the cordless phone that rested on the end table next to the sofa, he hit the first number on the speed dial. "I'm going to make some calls."

**O.O.O**

A major falling out had happened between Eric and Hank when Sheila had first explained to the rest of the group that she was pregnant. This news, in Eric's mind, had been completely unforgivable. After having taken a short time to digest all the ramifications of her announcement, Eric had ripped into Hank in a scathing diatribe that was far more vicious than anything that had ever been heard before from the Cavalier's mouth. In that entire tirade, he barely even touched on the irresponsibility of the acts that had led to Sheila's unexpected condition, and didn't even mention the overwhelming enormity of the task of teenagers trying to raise a child in such an insane and deadly place as the Realm. Nor did he particularly need to, either, since Hank was doing a spectacular job of beating himself up over those very issues. Hank had just sat there contritely and listened as Eric berated him about this being the ultimate screw-up that would almost certainly ensure that they would never get home again.

Eric had been right in his arguments even if his fury was beyond measure. How would Sheila be able to continue with them as they quested for a way home? Unless they found a portal very soon, Sheila would soon be far too awkward to walk miles a day or run from a horde of orcs. (Eric had actually used the word "fat," causing Sheila to burst into tears, which was the only time that Hank stood up to him during this one-sided argument.) And what about after the baby was born? There was simply no way they could ever hope to fight Venger while lugging around a squirming bundle and a diaper bag! No, they were stuck now, stranded away from their homes and their families forever, and Eric loudly and angrily made damn sure they all knew whose fault that was.

His anger was so irrational that Eric had gone so far as to try to leave the group over this. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed when Diana intervened. Though she was none too happy about the situation herself, the Acrobat had forcibly dragged Eric to the side and, though no one to this day knew what she had said in that agonizingly long conversation, she had managed to convince Eric that adventuring by himself would earn him a worse fate than sticking with them. What she did not succeed in doing was getting an apology out of Eric. He had meant every word he said. It was days before he spoke directly to either Hank or Sheila.

It was several weeks later when Sheila had finally started showing, which meant their time to search for the way home was coming to an end. By that point, the group consensus was that, if it came down to still being stranded in the Realm with Sheila unable to continue on, there was one safe and friendly place they could, and ultimately, did go.

When they arrived in Khadish, Rahmoud had lovingly welcomed them into his kingdom with open arms, with all the honors that were due his "children."

Perhaps it was the fact that they had found something of a safe haven in Khadish, something that they could at least call home, with people who loved them, where they could settle down and attempt to lead normal lives without having to scrounge for berries and look behind them every other step. Or perhaps it was because Eric, now the "son" of the King of the East, found he could get used to being waited on hand and foot by lovely maidens bearing gilded platters of the finest delicacies this exotic land had to offer. Either way, his dour outlook on being stuck in the Realm eventually softened, and along with that, his sullen attitude toward Hank slowly began to thaw.

When Caitlin was finally born, Eric had grudgingly admitted that the baby was "kind of cute." By the time she was one year old, the Cavalier had been caught playing peek-a-boo with her several times, and often said emphatically to anyone that asked that she was "really cute." And when, long after they had all given up on ever finding their way back to Earth, an unexpected portal whisked them all home when Caitlin was almost two, Eric told her parents almost daily that she was "adorable."

Now, that adorable little girl was seated on her Uncle Eric's lap, telling him all about the perilous travail in Art class that had led to the paper cut on her little finger and the really cool Scooby-Doo bandage that covered it. And Eric, who once described a baby as "wad of disgusting bodily functions," listened with all due seriousness and even kissed her finger better.

Diana, seated across the table in the Graysons' dining room, smiled into her cup of tea and said nothing. Sheila noticed the expression and grinned back at her best friend. My, how Eric had changed since they'd first met him.

Hank got up to answer the doorbell when it rang a minute or two later. It was still a bit early; they had all agreed to meet here at 7:30 that Friday evening. As usual, Diana had arrived almost half an hour ago, mainly to sit down with Sheila and chat over a cup of after-dinner chamomile tea. Eric had gotten here about five minutes ago, at about a quarter after, and was instantly monopolized by Caitlin, who hadn't noticeably stopped for a breath since she started jabbering Uncle Eric's ears off. Since it was still before the appointed time, Hank had a pretty good idea who was at the door.

"Hey, Presto!" he said as he opened the door. The old nickname was something they hadn't given up using, despite its direct connotations with the Realm. Though he went by "Al" in what they had deemed the "real world," the group still felt comfortable calling him by the only thing they had ever really called him in the Realm. "Presto" was a pun on his middle name, Preston, and technically, the origin of the nickname was not from his role in the Realm at all, but had been earned in Junior High through his semi-successful card tricks in the cafeteria.

"Hey, yourself!" Presto answered, his still-wiry though taller frame slipping through the door. "I got your message. How's the munchkin?" He looked past Hank, getting in a half-crouch just in case Caitlin came charging at him the way she did last time.

"Uncle Pesto!" Caitlin squealed, brandishing her bandaged pinky in the air from Eric's lap. She didn't come charging at him like a pigtailed bull in a china shop, only because Eric had a firm hold of the straps on her overalls to keep her from launching herself off his lap in her excitement. "Look! I got a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid 'cause I got a paper cut 'cause Mrs. Winchell gave us construction paper and Jamie Meyers wanted a purple piece and I had the only purple piece and so he pulled it out of my hand ..."

Caitlin continued to chatter away, oblivious to the reasons behind why her favorite aunts and uncles were meeting this evening. Sheila served up tea for everyone who wanted a cup, and they joked about the comments made on last night's Tonight Show as 7:30 came and went. A friendly argument had broken out about which Chinese restaurant had the best Szechuan chicken in town when the clock clicked to 7:43. Diana was holding out for the Red Wok while Eric extolled the virtues of the Jade Dragon, though Presto insisted they were both wrong and needed to go try the excellent dish at the Bamboo Garden. Right about then, in the parking lot outside the open window, the sound of an older engine in definite need of a tune-up and quite possibly a new muffler interrupted the conversation.

Glancing at the clock, Sheila muttered, "I told you we should have told him we were meeting at 7:15, then he'd be here right on time!"

Outside, the engine cut off with a sharp backfire, the car doors slammed, and fifteen seconds later, the doorbell rang.

"Come on in, Rob!" Sheila called just before Hank could cross the room to answer the bell, and almost immediately, the door swung open to reveal her little brother.

Perhaps "little" was a misnomer. Though he had been a scrawny kid at ten, at age eighteen he was nearly as tall as Hank was now and every bit as muscular and athletic. Being the star of the high school baseball team had seen to that. Technically, Bobby, or "Rob" as he liked to be called now, was only in his Junior year at school. Though he had studied hard and taken special courses to make up for the missed years, he just had too much lost time to make up for, and had to be held back a year. Not that it bothered him much, as long as he kept his grades up, that just meant another year on the baseball team!

"Sorry, guys," he began, knowing by the undisguised glances that his friends made towards the clock that he was late yet again. "Practice went over and I couldn't get away - hey, it's the Living Whirlwind!" he exclaimed as Caitlin shrieked happily and this time managed to squirm deftly out of Eric's grip to run to another of her favorite uncles. He scooped his niece up and swung her into the air, eliciting a squeal of pure delight.

"And then I couldn't get off work right on time, so it's not really his fault that we're late," came a voice from behind Rob. The voice belonged to a striking, raven-haired young woman who had entered the house with him. Though her uniform proclaimed her to be a checker at Whizzy's Market, her ethereal, mysterious aura transcended the embroidered polo shirt and name tag and made her brief nineteen years seem like a lie. Hank well remembered that same, knowing expression shining in her deep brown eyes from the first day he'd met her, years ago in another world: She Knew. She mysteriously, inexplicably knew things about a person or place or event that no one had the right to possibly know.

"But you knew that was going to happen, right?" Eric called out to her with a faintly sarcastic smile.

"Of course I did!" Terri replied calmly, finding an empty seat at the already crowded dining table. "Although anyone could have told you the same thing. I've been late getting off every afternoon this week!" She grabbed a butter cookie from the half-empty plate and declined a cup of tea. "So what's up? There's usually a pretty good reason when we call the war council like this."

"Let me go put Caitlin in the other room," Sheila replied, taking her daughter from Rob, "and then we'll show you. Caitlin, honey, you want to go watch some cartoons while we have a grown-up talk in here?"

"_Aladdin_!" Caitlin demanded, bouncing happily beside Sheila as her mother shepherded her into the family room. "I wanna watch _Aladdin_!"

Hank groaned inwardly at Caitlin's choice of cartoon. The fact that the Arabian tale with djinnis and magic and vast deserts sands was one of her favorites had abruptly taken a whole new significance. Did she really remember Khadish, the magnificent Eastern Kingdom where she had spent the first twenty-one months of her life in the pampered existence of the great King's first 'granddaughter?'

"You don't look so good," Diana informed Hank, setting down her teacup and placing a concerned hand on his shoulder. "Is something wrong?"

"You tell me," Hank replied. As he heard the sound of the television coming on in the other room, he stood to retrieve the folder from the kitchen counter. "Caitlin seems to be a budding artist," he explained, placing her drawing in the middle of the table for everyone to see. "Take a look at what she did in class this week."

Ten seconds passed in stunned silence before anyone moved. No one even noticed when Sheila quietly slipped back into the dining room. Everyone's attention was completely focused on the drawing of the Dragon Queen as it was quickly passed around the table so they all could get a good look. Presto, the last to look at it, handed it back to Hank and summed everyone's thoughts up in one simple phrase. "Uh, oh."

"Yeah, exactly," Hank agreed. "She remembers."

**O.O.O**

"Are you _serious_?" Eric gasped. "How long has this been going on?"

"Apparently longer than we'd like to think," Sheila answered. "She did that drawing earlier this week. I went to talk with her teacher and found out all sorts of things." Reclaiming her chair, Sheila related every detail of the parent-teacher conference, from the Robin Hood comparison that Mrs. Winchell said that Caitlin made, right down to the disappearing Midge doll trick. By the time she had finished, grim expressions had settled on every face around the table.

Diana was first to break the brooding silence. "Well, we can't have this. What happens if she tells the wrong people about everything she remembers? There's only so much we can cover up."

"And what do we say when she starts asking us about it?" Hank continued. "What if she asks about Grandpa Rahmoud or wants us to explain why there are no lizard-men here? What in the world are we supposed to tell her?"

"Well, I suppose telling her not to talk about it won't work?" Rob suggested, leaning back and casually putting his arm on the back of Terri's chair. Mainly the gesture was a signal that he was hoping that Terri could come up with a better suggestion; he adored his niece but quite frankly he really didn't know much about children. He'd been in way over his head on the few times he'd tried to baby-sit her, and from that experience, he certainly couldn't imagine ever wanting to be a father. At least, not at his age. But then he glanced at Hank and reminded himself that his brother-in-law hadn't been much older than he was now when Sheila got pregnant. Hank hadn't exactly wanted to be a father at that age either, and yet he'd managed to make a pretty darn good one. Then again, that was just Hank, who somehow always brought out his best no matter what the situation. But it certainly had taught Rob a thing or two about what chances a young guy probably shouldn't take with his girlfriend.

"Not in a million years would that work," Terri confirmed Rob's question. She had two younger siblings and from that, knew just what little kids could be like when they were sworn to a secret. "But let me ask you guys something, okay? Is this _really_ a crisis?"

"Terri," Hank began, "I don't think you-"

"No, hold on, I wasn't saying anything about letting the whole world know about the Realm," Terri interrupted, waving her hands to take back control of the conversation. "What I'm saying is, every kid I know has some sort of make-believe world when they're young. Most of them just grow out of it at some point. I think any adults that hear her talking about the Realm are going to pretty much shrug it off as kid stuff."

"Well then, let me turn it around and ask you something," Sheila responded seriously. "Did you have your own make-believe world when you were a kid?"

"Yeah," Terri nodded with a vague smile. "I had a dozen talking teddy bears for imaginary friends."

"I've _met_ talking teddy bears," Sheila answered. "And when I was little, I had my own make-believe world with unicorns and flying horses. I've met those in real life, too. I know the difference between what was real and what was imaginary. Deep down, I always did even as a kid, so I think my point is that Caitlin might too, no matter what an adult might call it. I know she wasn't even two when we finally got home, but don't you think that there might be a chance she can sort out the difference like we can?"

Frowning as she gave it due consideration, Terri finally mused, "You know, I really can't give you an honest answer there. I don't think I have any memories at all from before I was two. Actually, I don't think too many people remember much before kindergarten, at least not all that clearly anyway. But it looks like Caitlin does. Which you're saying means you'll never convince her that it didn't happen because it sounds like she remembers everything too clearly."

"_Drops of rain and twigs of elm, Caitlin can't remember the Realm_!" Presto chanted in response, twiddling his fingers grandiosely. Though his magic had no effect here on Earth, at least his bogus incantation had the effect of lightening the mood somewhat. Especially when Eric frantically slid under the table and yelped, "Look out! He's at it again!"

Everyone laughed as Eric peeked over the edge of the table a moment later. "Is it safe?" he asked with mock anxiety, climbing back into his chair and straightening his sweater. "No flaming bowling balls or anything?"

Glad for the brief respite of laughter, the group settled back into pondering what to do about the fact that Caitlin remembered the one place they were trying so hard to forget. Finally, Diana suggested, "Okay, so let's not try the 'it never happened' approach. What if we told her that yes, she remembers something, but we were able to convince her that she just remembers wrong?"

Hank and Sheila frowned curiously at one another. Convincing their daughter that she was wrong about a firmly held belief was difficult at best to outright impossible. "How so?" Sheila finally asked.

"Well," Diana drawled, "call me crazy, but what if we could make her believe that everything she remembers was from movies that she saw when she was really little? Like _Aladdin_ in there - we might be able to convince her that those are her memories of Khadish, if she has any." She began warming up to the possibilities, and was now ticking the suggestions off on her long fingers as she came up with them. Obviously she did not make the connection that the _Aladdin_/Khadish comparison was what had upset Hank earlier. "And maybe we could say the dragon memories came from, I don't know, a fairy tale play at the children's theater? Or Presto can put on a few 'magic' shows and then show her how the tricks are done so she starts thinking of all magic as just a bunch of sleight of hand? Or maybe, maybe Hank, if you started goofing around with an archery set in the back yard, then maybe she'd begin to believe that you just had a regular bow and arrow all along?"

The others seemed to like this idea, and when Diana paused to think of some other alternatives, they quickly jumped in with their own suggestions. "I think I've got _Dragonslayer_ and _Clash of the Titans_, the first one, on video somewhere," Rob added. Somewhere in that frightening mess he called a bedroom. "We can let her watch those!"

"And how about we take her to the amusement park?" Eric suggested. "We could show her all those animatronic monsters on the ride and explain that they're only robots, not the real thing."

This brought a moment of uneasy silence. In all the time they had been back, only Eric had made a pilgrimage to the amusement park, to find closure in watching the ride that had shattered their lives by thrusting them into a portal to another world; watching as smiling, giggling children jumped in the car at the beginning of the ride, watching as they came out the other side, safe and sound, a little wobbly from the inertia of the roller coaster but smiling and giggling nonetheless. It was not whisking helpless victims into a world stranger and more surreal than a Salvador Dali painting. No, it was just a ride.

The others had not been able to bring themselves to go back to that fateful park. Perhaps they didn't want to actively seek out a reminder of that closed chapter of the past, or at least in Rob's case, deep down they were afraid of what would happen if they got too near that accursed roller coaster. But when Eric suggested it, they all had to laugh at their own concerns. He was right. It _was_ just an amusement park attraction, nothing more. If kids continued to disappear from it, the thing would have closed long ago. The portal that had torn them away from their home world and into the Realm had been a fluke. Maybe they all needed to see that.

"Yeah," Hank said slowly, looking to Sheila for her nod of agreement. "That just might be a good start. How about tomorrow afternoon? Sheila's got some homework and I've got some yard maintenance to take care of in the morning, but after that, we're free."

"Surprisingly enough, I don't coach this Saturday," Diana said. "I can make it."

"Yeah, my weekends are my own," Eric added, checking the calendar app on his iPhone. "Name the time and I can be there."

"Um, I've got some test results I need to finish writing up, but I think I can get it done tonight," Presto said after giving consideration to the size of the project he was interning on. "Tomorrow I should be free in the afternoon."

"I have a short day tomorrow, I get off work at noon," Terri told them, and thought about it for a second. "I'll actually be getting out of there at about 12:15. So if we make it after 1:00, I can be there."

"Sure, I can pick her up and we'll meet you there!" Rob added enthusiastically. Though he didn't care for the Dungeons and Dragons ride any more, he'd jump for any chance to go to the amusement park just because he loved the midway's cotton candy.

"Sounds like a plan, then," Sheila agreed, getting up from her chair. "I'll go tell Caitlin." Going into the other room, she could be heard saying, "Katie, honey, do you want to go to the amusement park tomorrow and go on all the rides? Caitlin, how did you get those cookies? Oh, great, that's just what I need, a kid on a sugar high at bedtime! It's not like you're energetic enough as it is!" The sound of the television clicked off as Caitlin giggled her excited agreement about going to the park. "Well, then, it's all settled," Sheila said as she walked back into the dining room with her bouncing daughter, placing the uneaten cookies back on the plate where Caitlin must have swiped them. It was like mother, like daughter in many ways, and now it seemed like Caitlin was already earning her mother's title of 'Thief.' Was this yet another thing that the little girl inexplicably remembered from the Realm?

"One o'clock, then is that agreed?" Diana confirmed.

"Looks like it," Eric said, tapping his iPhone with a flourish, then slipping it into one pocket while removing his carved leather wallet from another. Waving it emphatically, he said, "And just to prove my point and show you that I'm right, as always, we're now all going to The Jade Dragon for the best Szechuan chicken you've ever tasted. On me."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Early the next morning, without any warning, something mercilessly attacked Eric and tried to kill him while he lay sleeping peacefully in the presumed safety of his king-sized, satin-sheeted bed. A burning, blinding light slashed across his eyes just moments before a klaxon cry sent him scrambling from the covers.

"Wha-? What?!" he shouted blearily, fists ready to fight. Despite his privileged life back here on Earth, his reflexes were still honed to a fine edge from the years of fighting for his very life in the Realm. Squinting against the light shining in his face that no amount of arm flailing would fend off, he tried to see what had attacked him. "Aw, blasted sunshine!" he mumbled as his eyes focused on bright yellow rays emanating from the curtains he'd forgotten to shut. Damn, that must have been one too many bottles of Tsingtao at the Chinese restaurant last night. Dropping face-first into the pillow while muttering a few choice phrases, he pulled the blanket over his head to block out the cheery morning sunbeams that threatened to blind him.

But still, there was that shrill scream. Again. And again.

One hand groped out from under the covers, feeling around on the nightstand until he located his iPhone. The only reason he answered it was to get it to stop that annoying ringing. It was just too early in the morning to deal with this, whatever it was, but having his eardrums reamed by that insistent, repetitive ring tone was a hundred times worse. "It's seven o'clock on a Saturday, this better be good," he mumbled into the phone, half-muffled by the velveteen coverlet.

"Hi, Eric! It's me, Michelle!" came the too-cheerful voice on the other end, putting even more of a damper on the rough start to Eric's day. As far as hangovers went, this one wasn't very steep, but its accompanying minor headache now erupted into a near-volcanic explosion.

Resisting the urge to bury his head under the pillow, Eric silently cursed the Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone, sent a few nasty thoughts at the memory of Steve Jobs for creating the iPhone, then replied succinctly, "What do you want at this hour?"

"Oh, I just saw a _lovely_ notice in this morning's paper! Lawrence and Son's Jewelers is hosting a little event of the most _gorgeous_ diamond rings you have ever seen!" A sly giggle crept into the overly sweet voice on the other end. "I keep suspecting you're in the market for one, so I thought maybe ..."

Eric groaned inwardly, rolling onto his back and flopping his free arm over his eyes as his caller chattered on about the beautiful jewelry she had seen and so admired. How long did she think she could keep this farce up? Michelle VanWey, the bane of Eric's existence, had absolutely convinced herself that they were about to be engaged after they'd met at one of his father's business socials, where he'd been foolish enough to offer her a drink. He hadn't been able to get rid of the clingy little air-head since. And, he suspected, all he had to do was lift his wallet if he wanted to know the reason why.

Interrupting the shameless hint-dropping regarding a diamond ring before he decided to go ahead and vomit, Eric said, "Sorry, Shell." He knew the girl hated such a common nickname, so of course that was why he made a point of using it. "As impressed as I am that you actually read the paper, today I'm taking my niece and some of my real friends to the amusement park."

A moment of silence on the other end of the line implied a certain amount of shock at such a plebeian thing to do. "Oh," Michelle said after a long moment of disbelief. "The amusement park. What a _quaint_ little idea. Is this the little girl who really isn't your niece?"

An exasperated sigh. "Well, not technically, but that doesn't matter. She's my niece anyway," Eric said firmly, not sure if his caller could understand the concept of family that one is born into versus family that one picked. To her, the pedigree was all that mattered ... likely because of the wealth tied to it. "Her dad is more of a brother to me than my own brother, and that's all there is to it."

"Oh, well then," Michelle's voice brightened to saccharine levels, "maybe I ought come along too! I should so love to meet your _dear_ little friends! I _so_ want to know what it is you see in them!"

Eric sat bolt upright, wide awake and mind suddenly clear and racing as he kicked himself for letting that information slip. Michelle VanWey, infiltrate his circle of closest friends? No van way could he allow that to happen! "You can't!" was the first thing that came out of his mouth.

The voice on the other end of the line became petulant. "Why not? A day at the amusement park? It could be fun! After all, when was the last time we spent a day together?"

_Never, you idiot!_ Eric thought hard at the phone, but he did not voice the truth. Instead, he lied with an amazing amount of finesse. "Well, of course we're not going to the local amusement park. We're flying Caitlin, her parents, and a few other friends to Disneyland for the day. And you know my dad's personal jet only holds eight passengers! All the seats are full. Sorry, Shell! I guess you can't come along." For the final touch, he added, "And the plane leaves in an hour so I gotta go!" Before another word could be said, he hit the End Call icon and silently lamented that it wasn't nearly as satisfying as slamming an old-fashioned receiver into its cradle.

"Give me a break," Eric muttered, flopping back onto the thick memory foam mattress. _How did I ever get tangled up with that girl?_ he wondered as he stared absently at the slowly rotating ceiling fan. Michelle VanWey was arrogant and condescending, a pouty, privileged little socialite who was obsessed with the big dollar signs he carried. The girl was rapidly slipping on his tolerability scale – and she'd never ranked very high to begin with. Man, even _Venger_ was never that bad!

With a sigh, Eric admitted to himself that it hadn't been all that long ago when the description could have easily applied to him too. At least he'd grown out of it, even if it was the Realm that had forced that maturity onto him, like it or not. It was really too bad for all humanity that Michelle hadn't been the one to get pulled into the Realm. The experience would have done the world a ton of favors especially if Fate had been so kind as to ensure she didn't survive it.

On that thought, Eric drifted back to sleep, smiling at the pleasant mental image of the falsely blonde and perfectly manicured debutante, dressed in her pink chiffon gown and dripping with jewels, slowly being eaten by Tiamat.

His very last thought before his eyes slid shut and he dozed off, was to wonder just what effect that amount of silicone would have on Tiamat's digestive system.

**O.O.O**

A little after 1:00 that bright and sunny afternoon, Diana was having no luck convincing Presto to pick up the sledge hammer and ring the carnival bell at the amusement park. She'd even done it herself to show him how easy it was, and won a stuffed blue elephant for her efforts. Still, Presto adamantly refused. "Dammit, Diana, I'm a geek, not a strongman!" he kept repeating, unwilling to take the hammer that Diana tried to press into his hands.

"Aw, you're just afraid that everyone will see that you can't get it as high as me!" Diana laughed, failing again to shove the handle into Presto's hands.

"Well, yeah, that too!" Presto freely admitted, pushing his slipping glasses back up his nose. "So I'm a wuss. AND a geek. No big deal!"

Next to them, the ticket-taker manning the carnival bell was nearly doubled over with laughter at the sight of skinny little Presto skittering in a big circle around Diana, trying to avoid the sledge hammer like it was a hot potato. Suddenly, Diana darted out and caught him by the collar; he yelped but couldn't get away from her strong grip as she forced the hammer into his hands.

"There! Now all you have to do is hit the lever thingy," Diana explained, awkwardly marching him towards the bell like a demented drill sergeant.

"But, but I didn't buy any tickets yet!" Presto protested in a new approach, still trying to get out of it. He figured he'd probably drop the hammer if he even tried to swing it over his head. Actually hit the lever? Not on his life.

"That's okay," Diana laughed. "I've got plenty!"

"But ... but ..."

"Diana, are you being mean to him again?"

Both of them stopped before their friendly shoving broke into an all-out wrestling match, looking up as the familiar voice called to them. A couple dozen yards away, they spotted Hank walking towards them, his arm linked with Sheila's. Caitlin bounced gaily along beside them, holding on to her mommy's hand. What appeared to be ketchup and relish from the remnants of a hot dog in Caitlin's other hand was liberally smeared all over the lower half of her face.

"Uncle Pesto! Auntie Diana!" the little girl shrieked happily, her ketchupy hand slipping from Sheila's to run and give them both big hugs.

"Saved from the bell!" Presto commented, handing the hammer back to the ticket-taker just before Caitlin plowed into him. "Hey, kiddo," he laughed, swinging the child into the air with notably more ease than he had the much lighter hammer. "What do you think? Do you like this place so far?"

"Mommy took me on the merry-go-round!" Caitlin bubbled with sheer, youthful excitement, absolutely giddy to be surrounded by all the wonderful sights and smells and sounds. "I rode the tiger and we went around and around and daddy bought me a hot dog!"

"I can see that!" Presto answered, trying to dodge her ketchup-covered fingers as she waved her hands for emphasis as she talked. Too late. She'd already liberally garnished his shirt with several different condiments.

"Here, let me get that," Sheila offered as Caitlin jabbered to her captive audience about the merry-go-round, which, since they had only arrived a short time ago, was so the only ride she'd been on so far. As Sheila wiped off her daughter's hands and face with an extra napkin and a little Mom-spit, the universal child-cleaning agent, she asked Diana, "You guys been here long?"

"Not really," Diana answered. "Just long enough to show Presto up with the bell ringy-dingy-thingy." She proudly held up the stuffed elephant as if it was an Olympic gold medal. "Even a fabulous prize like this couldn't tempt him to flex his muscles and try it!"

"Wimp," Sheila teased Presto.

"Wimp, geek, wuss, and proud of it!" Presto declared puffing out his chest as much as possible, which, he knew, wasn't much. But it earned him a laugh from the girls. Then, going back to the original question, he explained, "Diana and I carpooled and we got here about 20 minutes ago."

"Then we must have just missed you at the gate," Hank said, taking in the whole park with his eyes as he talked. "We got here about 15 minutes ago. Nobody else here yet?"

"Well, you know that Rob and Terri are going to be late, that's just the way things work," Diana answered, giving a big shrug. "With you guys getting here, that just leaves Eric ..."

"I'm right here."

They turned in time to see Eric walk around from the other side of the dart-throw booth with a wave of greeting. Though he had a smile on his face as he strolled towards them, oddly enough, it seemed a forced expression. Something was troubling him, though not badly enough to keep his smile from genuinely warming up when Caitlin squealed his name and waved back at him.

"Hey, anyone want a drink?" he offered casually when he got closer to the group, aiming his thumb at the food vendors. "For a cheap tourist trap, there's a place over there that makes the best strawberry lemonade you've ever tasted."

"Sure - if you tell us what's bugging you," Sheila answered with forthright bluntness.

Eric didn't even look surprised at her observation. None of them could be surprised anymore. After spending years together, depending on one another for their very lives, seeing their soaring victories and their crushing defeats just in their attempts to survive the day, there was nothing that any of them could really hide from the others for long. Even now, they were all still well-oiled parts of a greater machine; if something was even slightly off with one cog, the others would surely know. So Eric shrugged nonchalantly. "I was just back there," he said, pointing his thumb generally over his left shoulder.

There could really be no question as to what 'back there' meant.

With varying degrees of unease weighing on their faces, the others stared in that direction for a moment, even though their view was completely blocked by the booths. "And..?" Hank prompted after a few seconds.

"And it's still just a ride. And it still unnerves me," Eric admitted. "I didn't go on it or anything. I thought I'd wait for all you guys. So I just stood there and watched it for a while." Finding a seat on a nearby bench, Eric looked around to make sure that no unwanted ears were listening. "Every time I come back here and watch that ride," he admitted in a serious voice, "I don't know whether to laugh at myself for being so paranoid about it, or whether I should buy this whole park just so I can tear that damned thing down!"

The others nodded quietly in complete understanding of Eric's feelings, though Caitlin, with no way of comprehending the subtext of the conversation, demanded to know, "What ride?"

"The, um," Presto tried to speak for all of them, but it was harder than any of them had realized to voice that simple name. "The Dungeons and Dragons ride." He visibly swallowed hard, unable to quite believe he'd said it aloud. They'd always referred to it as 'the roller coaster,' or even just 'the ride,' as if pronouncing its full title would be akin to saying the name of He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

"It's a scary ride," Sheila further explained to her daughter when Presto trailed off. "I'm not sure if we're even going on it. But there are lots of other rides to go on, as soon as Uncle Rob shows up, okay?"

"I wanna see!" Caitlin demanded, in typical six-year-old fashion latching on to the one thing that her parents were trying to distract her from. "I wanna see the scary ride!"

A significant look passed between the small group. Then, of all things, they felt the urge to laugh! Boy, was Eric right! They were all paranoid! Here they were, a group of adults, all afraid of a roller coaster, while a little child was not! Wasn't the Dungeons and Dragons ride exactly what they'd brought Caitlin to see? All along, the plan was to show her the gaping maw of the dragon at the start of the ride and the robotic monsters within. Telling her that she was here once when she was younger might convince her that was why she remembered seeing dragons before. And for that, they would have to go look at the ride sooner or later.

"C'mon, let's check it out," Hank agreed with a glance at his watch. "We'll probably meet up with Rob and Terri there, anyway."

It was a very short walk to the fence around the Dungeons and Dragons ride. And yet, despite their earlier laughter at themselves, every step of the way felt like a step to the hangman's gallows to those who had taken that fateful ride, years ago. They tried not to show it. They tried to remind themselves that they were just being paranoid, that the roller coaster brought hundreds of children safely to its end every day. For their own sakes as much as for Caitlin's, they tried to laugh and make small talk along the way. It was just a ride, after all! What was so intimidating about that?

Still, their steps grew slower and slower the closer they came to the chain-link fence.

Too soon they came to a stop, most of them looking upon the ride that had shattered their lives for the first time since they were torn from this world and thrust into one that they had never come to fully comprehend. It looked so harmless now, a simple amusement park attraction. They watched as on one end, a group of children loaded up into a car, while on the other end, laughing passengers in another car safely rolled to a halt.

"That's not a scary ride!" Caitlin declared after a moment of squinting at the dragon's head. "I'm not 'fraid of that!"

"You know what, Katie?" Hank said with a relieved laugh, "I'm not afraid of it, either!"

"Neither am I!" agreed Diana, as the others all chuckled openly at their own fears. Now that they were here, together, none of them really understood what the big deal was. And once Caitlin had said it in her childlike innocence, they'd all been freed to finally realize the same thing. "What do you say we go get some of that lemonade Eric mentioned and wait for Rob and Terri to get here, since they're obviously running late _again_?"

**O.O.O**

As Diana had observed, Rob and Terri were tardy as usual. Rob didn't even try to make an excuse this time. Shrugging it off when Sheila made a big show of checking her watch, he just said, "Yeah, yeah, I know, we were supposed to be here at one."

Now that everyone was together, and Rob had eaten his requisite cotton candy, the day was turning out to be quite the pleasant outing, despite the reasons for gathering there in the first place. It felt good to take the day off, to just be kids again, reclaiming some of the childhood which had been stolen from them, here, in this very park. It was almost as pleasurable as the day had started out to be, so many years ago, before the group had made that unlucky decision to follow nine-year-old Bobby onto the Dungeons and Dragons ride.

Though no one had yet broached the topic of the group riding the roller coaster again, they somehow kept within sight of it, even as they tried their luck at the nearby game booths along the midway or maybe wandered off in pairs or threes to ride one of the other attractions. Every so often, glances would stray towards The Ride, and then they would shake their heads, laughing at the ludicrous thought that they'd honestly let that silly thrill ride intimidate them for so long.

Diana and Eric were currently in line for giant pretzels, while Rob was showing off his legendary pitching skills, trying his hardest to impress Terri at the Ball-Toss booth. He wasn't having much luck, though; every time he knocked over the stack of plastic bowling pins, Terri would just sigh and say, "I knew you were going to do that." Whether she really did know, or whether she was just saying it to annoy him, Rob would probably never know for sure. As he threw the balls, Caitlin bounced around his feet, shrieking happily and clapping her hands every time a pin fell down.

Seated around a nearby picnic bench, Hank and Sheila discussed the topic of the day with Presto. "I don't know," Hank was saying with a shrug. "I mean, yeah, I realize that's why we brought her here in the first place. I can look at it now and see that everything's okay, but still, for some reason I just can't bring myself to take her on it."

"Well, what does she think so far, just by looking at it?" Presto inquired, picking at the bag of salted peanuts they were sharing.

"She's not all that impressed," Sheila admitted, watching her daughter bounce happily towards them, a stuffed prize clutched in her hands. "We haven't really started asking her about the dragon's head yet. As far as she knows, it's just like all the rest of the rides, and she really wants to go on all of them. But believe me, I really don't!" She paused a moment to watch her carefree daughter bounding about like a kangaroo on a caffeine high. "What have you got, Caitlin?" she called out as their little girl skipped closer. "Did Uncle Rob win you a prize?

"Look!" she giggled, proudly holding up the small toy: a stuffed, knockoff Aladdin doll, dressed in his gilded princely raiment. "It looks just like Grandpa 'cept he doesn't have a beard!"

Presto, Hank, and Sheila all suddenly looked like they were going to be ill.

"Oh, God ..." Hank muttered, hiding his face in his hands. Well, if they'd had any question before as to whether or not Caitlin remembered Khadish and Rahmoud, she'd just answered it for them.

"That's ... nice," Sheila managed to say as Caitlin clambered up on the bench as deftly as a monkey. The girl held the doll tightly as her other hand searched in the bag of peanuts for a particularly tasty-looking morsel.

The three adults at the table sent a silent message between themselves with their eyes. Caitlin's innocent remark seemed like pretty good opening. Sheila nodded, subtly handing the reins over to Presto.

"So, kiddo, what do you think of that big scary dragon over there?" Presto asked casually while pointing at the start of the Dungeons and Dragons ride.

"'S not scary," Caitlin told them for the second time today, this time through a mouth full of half-chewed peanuts.

"What do you mean, it's not scary?" Presto continued, sliding into his agreed-upon role of the adult who was playing along with a child's make-believe. "Have you ever seen a big, mean-looking dragon like that before?"

"I seen lotsa dragons," Caitlin informed him matter-of-factly, as if it was the most ridiculous question in the world. "An' they're all bigger and meaner'n that!" More peanuts spluttered everywhere as she spoke.

"Katie, honey," Sheila interrupted, wiping the peanut crumbs off her daughter's face, for her part acting the part of the mom gently correcting a child's misconception. The problem was, this time, Caitlin was really in the right, and they all knew it. "There's no such thing as dragons. They're only in books and movies and ..."

"Hey, guys!" Rob interrupted, returning to the picnic bench now that his supply of tickets had been exhausted. Terri lugged along the five-foot tall Pink Panther she'd begged Rob to win for her. "Terri and I are going to go get some cotton candy and some more tickets, we'll be right back. Hey, that's neat," he said to Caitlin as she made the Aladdin doll 'walk' across the table. "Did your daddy win that for you?"

Frowning at that, Sheila glanced at Hank, who shrugged in bewilderment and shook his head. Well, if Rob hadn't won it, where had Caitlin gotten it? Sheila was about to open her mouth to sternly speak to her daughter about stealing, when she was interrupted by an abrupt, urgent shout.

"Omigod! Hide!"

They all looked up in alarm when Eric's panicked voice startled them. The former Cavalier was running towards them at full speed, the sheer terror glazing his face far more intense than it had been the first time he'd looked face to snout with a dozen angry orcs. "Run! Hide! Anything! Don't let her see you! Or me! Don't let her see me!"

The others scrambled to their feet; Hank was already reaching for the pocket where he always carried a good-sized folding knife. "What? What is it?" they demanded, all easily dropping into practiced defensive stances, as if it was only yesterday that they were still fighting for their very lives in the Realm.

"It's ... aw, man, it's too late," Eric whimpered, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "We're dead. I don't know how she found me."

"Who?!" Diana demanded. She had obviously run right after Eric when he'd broken from the pretzel line in terror, but had just now caught up with him. Eric could only ever run faster than Diana when he was in complete fear for his life. That could only mean something dire was about to happen.

"Her," Eric sighed in resignation, pointing into the crowd. After a moment, they all realized that he was indicating an overly-dressed, aloof and uppity-looking young woman, artificially beautiful, sporting far too many jewels, far too high heels, and far too tight a mini-skirt for a day at the amusement park, sneering faintly down her nose at just how _common_ the herd of people in her way appeared to her. "I'm sure you've heard me mention her." Eric said with a sickly sarcastic grin. "That's my wanna-be fiancée, Michelle VanWey."

**O.O.O**

"Why, Eric, _there_ you are!" the young woman gushed, totally ignoring the others around the table. "I've been looking all over for you, you naughty little kidder, you!" She glanced him over critically as she spoke, with a particularly distasteful expression aimed at his non-designer blue jeans. "You're looking very ... _casual_ today."

"It's my day off," Eric explained, a note of defensiveness creeping into his voice. A day off, to him, meant relaxing and having fun and, most importantly, not having to put up with Michelle VanWey. "How did you know we came here?"

"Don't be silly," she cooed, shoving past Diana as if she didn't even see her, clearly intending to take Eric's arm. Even though Eric nimbly dodged her first attempt, she was undaunted and continued to follow him as he sidestepped around the picnic table, staying just one step ahead, not-so-subtly trying to escape her. "You told me you were taking someone to the amusement park today, but then you said you were flying to Disneyland. I called your father's airstrip to see that the plane had taken off safely, and to ask when you were getting back. I do _so_ worry about you in that little jet, you know!" Her cloying simper turned into a pout. "But then I was told that your father had taken the jet two days ago to Baltimore! So I assumed you must have been kidding about Disneyland, and since this is the only amusement park around that you can reach in a day trip without flying, you must have come to this ... _rustic_ little place."

Again she looked around at the attractions with a disdainfully curled lip. "So I came here to find you. Can you imagine that they had the gall to do something as base as charge admission when I arrived? I told them I was just looking for someone but they made me hand them money anyway! Charging admission to something like this is robbery!"

Eric gaped. Even though he was furious that she'd called around trying to keep track of him, he was legitimately amazed that she had been capable of applying enough logic to deduce where he had gone. Could it be that she really had some spare brain cells that weren't devoted to the trends of the hottest fashion designers?

"Oh, like attending a $500-a-plate-for-_admission_ dinner ISN'T robbery?" Presto's muttered comment jolted Eric out of his surprise. It had been said just loud enough so that Michelle could pretend to ignore him if she wished. Judging by the furious flush of purple rising up her neck, it looked like the snotty heiress was not about to be noble enough to let it slide.

"Shell, have you met my friends?" Eric said quickly, diverting the conversation to harmless introductions before things got uglier than they already were. "I've known most of these guys since Junior High. This is Albert Sydney. Sometimes he goes by Al, but mainly we call him 'Presto' because he's a real wonder with magic tricks." Eric said it with no malice. Though he'd done nothing but tease Presto for his poor handling of his magic hat while they were in the Realm, he had since come to understand just how many times those spells-gone-awry had actually saved his bacon. "And this is Diana Curry, and Hank Grayson - never call him Henry or you'll wind up with a major wedgie." Eric could not hide his grin at Michelle's clear dislike of his colorful commentary. To add insult to injury, he obligingly gestured as to just what a wedgie was, in case there was any possibility that Michelle didn't know. "And this is Hank's wife Sheila, their daughter Caitlin, the one who I explained is my niece." He felt himself grow more than a little angry at the way Michelle rolled her eyes at him, but continued introductions as if he hadn't noticed her haughty rudeness. There were few things that annoyed Michelle VanWey more than being ignored, and annoying the heck out of her was probably the only thing that would make this encounter tolerable. "That's Sheila's brother, Rob O'Brien, and his girlfriend Terri Buchanan. And, uh, the Pink Panther."

Terri made the giant Pink Panther salute, seemingly oblivious to the arrogance that emanated in waves from this interloper. There was an inexplicably knowing smile on her lips that did not escape the notice of her friends.

A tense moment of silence crackled in the air as Michelle deigned to acknowledge the others standing around the table. "Hello," she said with ill-disguised contempt, her smile chilly enough to give a white dragon frostbite. She did not offer her hand to any of them to shake.

It didn't help the awkward moment any when Caitlin tugged at her mommy's arm and said, "She looks like Snow White's wicked stepmother!"

"SOOOOO anyway," Eric blurted hurriedly, the only way he knew to keep himself from laughing and keep Michelle from snapping at Caitlin. He could see the others' shoulders shaking with barely-restrained laughter, even though Sheila's face had blushed a bright red at her daughter's comment. Maybe, just maybe, this could turn out to be enjoyable after all! "Everyone, this is Michelle VanWey. I think it would be great for her to join us and have a little fun, right guys?" he asked with a big wink.

Shooting a nasty snarl at Caitlin, Michelle simply wrote her off right then and there as an incorrigible brat belonging to incompetent, low-class parents. "I think it would be lovely to spend the day with you," she answered Eric with forced brightness, not understanding the communication that could happen wordlessly between such a close group. Then, she looked at the others, as if remembering she was supposed to include them as well. "What would all you wonderful little people like to do first?"

"Well, we were going to ride the Zipper," Rob said quickly, picking up on Eric's wink. "It's a fun ride, I bet you'll love it! But we thought first we might get some hot dogs and Coke and cotton candy. We'll get you some, you'll like it!"

Just upon meeting Michelle, they all had gotten the correct impression that she would never in her life have done something so ordinary as visit an amusement park. She probably had no idea how insane a ride like the Zipper really was, and certainly couldn't know that she should never, ever eat a load of carnival food before riding it. So it the least Rob could do would be to buy her a hot dog and soda lunch before taking her on that ride in the high hopes of making her puke all over herself within the first half-hour of getting here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

The devil was definitely wearing Prada. Or maybe it was Gucci. Frankly, Sheila just didn't care.

"My goodness, this is going to add five pounds to my thighs!" Michelle whined about the chili-cheese dog she'd bit into. "Ugh. What do you people see in these things? How can you eat this? And this cotton candy? Pure sugar! I'm going to have to do an extra four hours with my personal trainer just to work this off. At least your brother had the decency to get me a diet Coke!" Or so she thought. Rob had lied about that - he got the regular beverage and cheerfully told her it was diet when she asked.

Some time ago, Presto had made up a lame excuse and mercifully dragged Eric away from Michelle. That left only Sheila and Diana to deal with the arrogant heiress, since Rob and Terri had gone to the parking lot to stuff the Pink Panther and Diana's elephant in their car. And the best way Sheila could see to deal with the peevish socialite, at least for the short term, was to basically tune her out as she complained.

"Hey, guys! We're back!" came Terri's voice at long last, like a welcome angel singing above Michelle's near-demonic blathering. Both Diana and Sheila breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

"Ready to go on the Zipper?" Rob asked Michelle, somehow managing to keep the wicked anticipation out of his voice. "Just finish up your Coke and we can go!" Patting his pockets as their uninvited guest muttered something about not liking to be rushed, Rob came to an annoying realization. "D'oh! Man, I forgot to buy more tickets!" He slapped his forehead and glanced at Terri, who was also searching her pockets and coming to the same conclusion. "Sis, you got some we can borrow?"

As Sheila was very much looking forward to letting the unsuspecting debutante ride the most insane ride in the park, she immediately dug into her fanny-pack for the string of tickets she knew she had. "I'm sure I do," she said, rummaging around a bit. They were probably at the bottom, so she dug a few items out to get to them: Lipstick, comb, keys ...

"What is THAT?" Michelle gasped in awe, swiping Sheila's keyring from the picnic table where she had momentarily set it. "Where did _you_ get something like this?"

Sheila's head whipped around so fast that the bones in her neck could be heard clicking together. "It's nothing!" she insisted hurriedly, blanching as she reached to take her keys back. But Michelle deftly dodged her desperate grasp.

"It's just a fake," Diana had said too quickly, at almost the same moment, also lunging for the keys.

"Not on your life is this a fake!" Michelle countered, retaining her grip on the keys and nearly drooling as she examined the keyring. "If there's one thing I know, it's quality gemstones! This is no cubic zirconium counterfeit!"

What 'it' was that had so captivated Michelle was not the keys themselves, but the fob the ring was attached to. About the size and shape of a large egg, it was a beautiful, intricately faceted blue-white diamond, clearly priceless, glittering brightly in the afternoon sun as Michelle turned it over and over in her awestruck hands. The narrower end was set in a golden base; to this was attached the keyring. A 'smoke trail,' a band of darker, hazy blue within the pale blue of the diamond, captured Michelle's attention. Such a rare 'imperfection' would only make such a diamond that much more valuable. It was gorgeous, and almost surrealistically out of place here on a simple ring of house keys.

"That's ridiculous! Look, my husband has a decent job," Sheila snapped as Diana succeeded in her second attempt at snatching the keyring away from Michelle, "but do you honestly think he could have afforded to buy me a real diamond that size?"

"It's part of a joke," Diana tried to explain, falling back on a line they'd used to rationalize the existence of the gemstone once or twice before. Her casualness was belied, though, by the death-grip she had on the fob as she tried to shield it from that pair of prying eyes. "Things were kind of tight when they first got married. Hank kept promising to buy her the biggest diamond ring she'd ever seen. When he finally got her a ring," she continued to lie, pointing at the tasteful, jeweled band of Khadisian design on her friend's finger, "he got this thingy too, and wrapped it up and gave it to her first."

While Diana handed the keys back to her friend, Michelle's greedy eyes followed the fob all the way. "I don't know, that looks very real to me! I should like to take that to a fine jeweler and get his opinion."

"Oh, don't be silly!" Terri laughed. Sheila hoped that Michelle wouldn't notice the slight strain behind it as she, too, joined in the lie. "Who would be crazy enough to use a real diamond like that for a keychain? It probably looks so real because of all the sunlight hitting it. I don't think they even make diamonds that big. Now are you going to come ride the Zipper with us or what?"

"Well ..." the socialite hedged, her eyes darting back and forth between them. Sheila could tell that she knew stone was real, and the way they were acting only confirmed it. She guessed that to the heiress's mind, only possible answer was that it was stolen – someone as low class as herself should never, by rights, possess such a gemstone.

Apparently, Michelle was just shrewd enough to realize that insisting on seeing it now would only make these people even more reluctant to show it to her again. So for the moment she suddenly smiled in total agreement. "I suppose you could be right," she nodded, her bad acting making it obvious she was only pretending to let the subject drop. "Now, about this wonderful little ride you seem to enjoy so much?"

Sheila hurriedly stuffed the keyring back into her fanny pack and instead drew out the tickets she'd been searching for, handing them to her brother with an imperceptibly trembling hand.

As Rob and Terri firmly led Michelle away, Sheila breathed a shaken sigh and let Diana give her a comforting hug as she covered her eyes and berated herself. That was too close. She'd carried that gem for so long now, that she sometimes forgot what it must look like to people who had never seen it before. It would be so much safer if she could just lock it up in a strongbox and bury it twenty feet under the ground. But Rahmoud had given it to her for a reason, and had made her promise to always keep it safely within easy reach. Once they'd returned to Earth, her keyring was the best place she could think of to keep it where it would always stay close.

"Sheila? You okay?"

Sheila tried to smile at the sound of her husband's voice as he chased their boundlessly energetic daughter towards the picnic table. On their way back from the Saucers ride, Caitlin had won another bag of cotton candy at the Fishing booth, and was already in the first stages of launching into a major sugar high.

"I ... I guess so," Sheila explained, leaning into Hank's strong arm as he slid it around her shoulder while he sat. "It's just that Michelle person, she saw my keyring."

"Oh," Hank said quietly after a moment, registering the concern on both Sheila's and Diana's faces. He knew as well as they that letting it fall into unsuspecting hands could easily be far worse than openly telling the world about the Realm. "Did she ask about it?"

"Yeah," Diana admitted, a little too embarrassed at their nearly costly slip to actually meet his eyes as she spoke. "She got a real good look at it, too. We told her it was a fake, but I don't think she believed us. Thanks for sharing, sweetie," she added when Caitlin generously offered her a sticky blob of half-melted cotton candy.

"Hm, well," Hank drawled slowly, a half-smile creeping onto his features. "At least she didn't take it from you or anything, right? I know you're rattled, but it looks like no harm done, right? I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure it's going to be the last thing on her mind by the time Rob and Terri are done with her."

The joke made the two women laugh. "And if worse comes to worst and we can't ditch her after this," Hank added with a sly grin, "we can always tell Eric. I get the funny feeling that he's itching for an excuse to put her on a hit list!"

"You think so?" Diana laughed. "You know what I think? I think he's just dying to hear what Terri has to say. Did you see the smug grin on that girl's face when Eric introduced Michelle? She knows something."

"Of course she does," Hank agreed. "Terri just wouldn't be Terri if she didn't!" Glancing around the midway for a moment, he then asked, "Speaking of Eric, where'd he get off to?"

"Presto kidnapped him," Sheila explained. "He made up something about trying to find the men's room to get Eric away from Michelle, but really they've just been over there at the ring toss, waiting for her to get dragged off to the rides. See?" She pointed down the midway, where Presto noticed the gesture and waved back.

"That doesn't look like the men's room," Hank agreed, "but that's not a bad idea. Remind me to lay off that really delicious strawberry lemonade for the rest of the afternoon, okay? Let's just say that was a pretty badly-timed ride on the Spinning Saucers after three 20 ounce cups of it." Getting up from the bench again, he kissed Sheila on the temple and watched as Caitlin climbed under the bench, out the other side, and up on top of the table in less than five seconds to sit cross-legged and dive into the remainder of her cotton candy. "I'll get us some more tickets while I'm up. So it's your turn to watch the Living Whirlwind. And I'll be right back, because I sure don't want to miss hearing how much Michelle enjoyed her first amusement park ride!"

**O.O.O**

Once Miss VanWey was gone, Presto, who had seen Diana's signal, informed Eric that the coast was clear. Waving at Hank as he went off in search of the restrooms, they sat down at the table with a giant helping of nachos and cheese to share between them.

"Ugh," Eric commented with a nod in the general direction of the line for the Zipper. "Can you believe I was ever like her?"

A snappy comeback was not forthcoming, despite the fact that Eric had purposely left his comment wide open for one. They had noticed that the two women were distraught about something, but Eric had assumed that would happen to anyone who spent more than thirty seconds with his annoying 'wanna-be fiancee.' He therefore felt honor-bound to try lightening the mood. The two guys glanced at each other uncertainly when his noble attempt failed miserably.

"Um," Presto ventured, taking the direct approach, "I was too far away to hear you guys, but from where I was, it kinda looked to me like you guys had a fight over something. Anything bad happen?"

Sheila sighed and confirmed what Presto had thought he'd seen; in her single-mindedness to get rid of the annoying debutante, she'd and absently flashed the gemstone and Michelle had pounced.

At first the guys were as concerned as the ladies, knowing that Michelle would dog them with endless questions until she was satisfied. Unfortunately, Eric informed them that she was sharp enough, when it came to gems and jewels, to see through any claims that it was a fake. It left them wondering just what they could possibly say to explain it, but Eric was, rather amusingly, prevented from fully concentrating on their problem. Caitlin had climbed in his lap, and every time he opened his mouth to speak, she obligingly stuffed it with a wad of cotton candy.

They ultimately came to the realization that after today, Michelle's and Sheila's paths would probably never cross again. Those two traveled in different social circles and probably always would. So, if that held true, what was there to worry about? So long as they kept insisting the gem was a fake, and kept Sheila and Michelle apart for the rest of the day, it would never be more than a supreme annoyance. Would the socialite's eyes ever fall on the gem again? Not unless she was willing to stoop to pickpocketing while being crafty enough to keep a former Thief from catching her in the act. Michelle could, and likely would, ask all she wanted for the rest of her life, but she would probably never hold the 'proof' in her hands again.

Soon, the lightening topic had turned to how Eric could possibly go about cutting that example of Human Static Cling out of his life completely, which seemed to be the ultimate way of solving a lot of problems all at once. Caitlin was nearby, gleefully climbing all over a brightly painted, purple hippopotamus statue when Hank finally returned.

"I'm back," he said with a grin, taking his daughter's sticky, sugar-encrusted hand. "And you know what? I think I'm going to take Caitlin on the Dungeons and Dragons ride after all."

Surprised, Sheila stared over her sunglasses at him. "Really? What brought this on?"

Hank shrugged as Caitlin jumped up and down excitedly, squealing to go on the one ride that no one had taken her on yet, but which everyone had kept asking her about all day long. "Well, just now, I was looking at it, and I kept thinking to myself, why have I been putting it off all day? I mean, come on, what is there to be afraid of, really?" He gestured at the ride as another car loaded with passengers screeched safely to a stop. "See? Besides, Caitlin really wants to go."

"Well, I guess you can go if you want to," Sheila answered with a disbelieving shake of her head, "but I haven't got the nerve." Honestly, they all agreed that Hank was intellectually right, the portal that had taken them the first time they rode the roller coaster was probably a one-in-a-gazillion fluke. But still, once bitten, twice shy, as the saying went.

"None of you want to come?" he asked, looking from one face to the next around the picnic table.

"You're a braver man than me," Presto said, holding up his hands. "And Caitlin's braver than me, too, if that's the case. No, thanks."

"'Sides, don't you want to hear how Michelle liked the Zipper?" Eric added, malicious delight spreading across his features. As much as he couldn't stand that girl, he actually wanted to be here when she returned from that ride, just to see how she looked. Yes, he was absolutely hoping for some vivid stories when they got back, stories which he could savor for weeks.

Hank frowned slightly. "I don't think we should be that long," he said with a shrug. Then, with a self-deprecating smile, he added, "We might as well go now before my nerve fails me. It took me a while to work up to this, you know."

"Yeah! Yeah!" Caitlin giggled happily. "I wanna go on the scary ride! I wanna go!"

"See?" Hank laughed with a smile. "How can I deny that? Come on, Caitlin, let's go."

As Hank led his daughter towards the one ride that they'd been avoiding all day, Sheila turned back to the others with a lopsided grin. "We'd better ask those guys what they put in their strawberry lemonade," she said in mild wonder. "Whatever it is, it went straight to his head."

**O.O.O**

"Did you see her face?!" Terri howled uncontrollably as she and Rob fled from the Zipper. "I'd pay a million dollars to see that again!"

The two of them had kept up their pretense of being excited to ride the Zipper, bolstering Michelle's thin enthusiasm the entire time, right up to the moment when it was their turn to enter the ride's cage. They had gestured Michelle in first, and as she sat down and was strapped firmly in place by a lap belt and a harness, they suddenly told the operator that they were just standing in line to keep her company and didn't intend to join her. She'd called them all sorts of unpleasant names as they ditched her, running from the line and laughing hysterically as the kids behind them shrugged and took their seats. Even Rob wasn't brave enough to ride the Zipper.

Right now, as the pair of them laughed and guessed how long it would be before she barfed, the prim and proper Michelle VanWey was strapped in a steel mesh cage, being repeatedly flung hundreds of feet into the air and experiencing far more powerful G-forces than her father's Rolls Royce could ever simulate.

"Man, I wish Eric could have seen it!" Rob gasped, holding his aching ribs as he tried to speak around his laughter. "That would have made his day! But now that we've ditched her, you promised to tell me what you saw! You know something, I could tell by that big smirk on your face when you met her!"

"She will get everything in this life that she deserves," Terri intoned seriously, folding her hands and rolling her eyes heavenward. "And it will be through no one's fault but her own."

"Terrrrrrrrr-ri!" Rob whined.

"Okay, okay," she laughed, dropping the Dungeon Master act. Inexplicably, despite what their diminutive guide had told the young Barbarian, Terri had retained her power of prophetic dreaming even after she had returned from the Realm, but she felt she should keep it every bit as much a secret as the Realm itself. It was only with Rob and his friends that she felt safe in reveling in her ability. "It was a dream I had."

"Okay, even _I_ knew you were going to say that," Rob teased. "Now get to the juicy part."

"You're going to love this," Terri grinned back. "I didn't actually remember having this dream until I saw her, then it all came back to me. Or maybe I dreamed it right then, when I was wide awake. I dunno."

"Neat, but ..?" Rob prompted again.

"Okay, fine, Mr. Ants-In-Your-Pants," Terri teased. "She's going to get caught in a really embarrassing scandal. I remembered reading a newspaper, or wait no, I think maybe it was some trashy newsstand tabloid ..." Terri paused for a moment and the two of them looked up at the Zipper as it swung toward its apex. From inside the cage emanated a shrill, terrified scream that could only belong to Michelle.

"Anyway," she continued after they'd shared a good snicker at Michelle's expense. Purposely drawing her words out long enough to really make Rob suffer in gleeful anticipation as he hung on every syllable, she explained, "Little Miss Prissy there ... is going to get photographed ... in some illegal night club ... stoned off her rocker ... doing a bump-and-grind dance ... with two! Male! Strippers!"

Rob's jaw dropped. Then he absolutely howled as Terri exploded into fits of smugly delighted laughter. What an embarrassment! It was too perfect! That article in Terri's vision would be one for the old scrapbook, all right. "When?" he asked through mirthful tears. "Eric's gonna want to buy a dozen prints and frame them all!"

"That's a toughie." Terri frowned, thinking back over all the details of her dream. When she focused on the article she envisioned in the paper, she "zoomed in" on the image until she could almost read the folio line at the top. "J U ... I think the date on the article is either June or July, so probably in two or three months." She grinned as she tried to describe the photo she had seen in her dream. "I'm starting to remember it a little better now. The two guys in the picture were like totally in the buff," she laughed, her face turning red even as she giggled hysterically. "I can remember that they had to, or that they're going to have to bleep out their, um, you-know-whats in the photo. And I remember ... I ..."

Rob stopped laughing instantly, his merriment replaced by alarm as years of finely-tuned warning instincts kicked in.

Terri's voice had trailed off strangely, her eyes growing wide, almost to the point of horrified. There was something else she was seeing. Something bad.

"Terri? What's wrong?"

"I remember ..." she tried again. Her face rapidly losing its color, she started shaking visibly, while her eyes darted back and forth as if she was watching a movie that only she could see as the scenes unfolded before her.

"What?! What do you remember?" Rob demanded, looking around frantically for some sort of imminent danger as he instinctively reached into his pocket for a folding knife that was nearly identical to the one that his brother-in-law always carried.

"I ...oh, my God!" Terri shrieked, and took off running towards the midway as fast as her legs would allow.

**O.O.O**

The others nearly jumped out of their skins when Terri came screeching to a halt at the picnic table, a clearly distressed and totally perplexed Rob hot on her heels. Now what? It was stressful enough as it was, being here in the amusement park, looking at that ride, without one or another of them running and screaming and launching into a panic about something every so often.

"Guys! Guys!" Terri gasped, panting for breath and heedless of the stares she was drawing from passers-by.

"Terri! Calm down!" Diana exclaimed, grabbing the girl by the shoulders and hoping she wouldn't pass out. Like a coach dealing with an overexerted athlete, she instructed firmly, "Just breathe! Easy now! Bend over and put your hands on your knees if you feel dizzy, then tell us what happened."

At the same time, Sheila demanded, "Rob, what's wrong with her?" But Rob could only shrug in reply.

"Did you guys accidentally kill Michelle?" Eric asked hopefully, then glared at Presto when he received a kick to the shin under the table.

"Guys!" Terri panted, desperate to catch her breath. "Whatever you do, don't let Caitlin out of your sight for the rest of the day! Keep a close eye on her!"

"Calm down, she's with Hank," Diana said uneasily, feeling an icicle of panic stab through her chest and willing it down until Terri could explain herself. "Why? Did you have a dream or something? What did you see?"

"I saw ... I remember ..." Terri stammered. "I dreamed about a big dark room, and Caitlin was locked in it, and she was lost and scared and nobody was there with her!"

"You dreamed WHAT?" Sheila shrieked.

So distraught that she was stumbling over her own words, Terri wiped the tears from her eyes and forced herself to keep speaking as the others clearly grew as alarmed as she was. "Where is she? I mean, where is she right now? Why isn't she here where we can watch her?"

"She's ... Diana just said Hank's with her," Presto tried to assure everyone. "Right? He took her on the ride a few minutes ago ..."

"Who did I take where?"

Six hearts nearly leapt out of their chests at the sound of the confused voice approaching them. Hank was standing there, looking bewildered and slightly alarmed that he'd walked into the middle of some unknown crisis.

And he was alone.

"Where's Caitlin?" he asked, then blinked in confusion. Sheila and Eric had both demanded of him that same question at the same instant.

"What do you mean, where's Caitlin?" Hank demanded, looking around rapidly, but his little girl was nowhere to be seen. "I left her with you!"

"But you came back and got her!" Diana insisted. "We all saw you!" There were a few confused agreements from the others, who knew they hadn't imagined it and couldn't understand why Hank would deny it now.

"I don't know what you're talking about! I hit the restroom then stopped to buy us some more tickets and just got back now!" Hank insisted. He couldn't know what Terri had seen, it was clear from the way everyone was acting that something had happened to his precious little daughter. "I didn't come get her, I was in line at the ticket booth all this time!"

"But- but you did!" Sheila stammered, her stomach lurching in terror as she got out of her seat, looking frantically around the grounds. "You said you were going to take her on the Dungeons and Dragons ride!"

"No, I didn't, I w- the Dungeons and Dragons ride?" It took about two seconds for everything to fall into place in Hank's mind as he spun around to stare at the dreaded roller coaster. "Oh, SHIT!" he shouted, and sprinted in a mad panic towards the ride without another word.

"What's going on?" Sheila shrieked after him, the fear choking her voice as she called out frantically for her little girl, "CAITLIN! CAITLIN, WHERE ARE YOU!"

The others were on their feet now too, also calling desperately for the missing child. "I'm going to go get Security!" Presto offered.

"Forget Security, we need the cops!" Eric said as he whipped out his iPhone. "I'm calling 911! If she's been kidnapped-"

"We need to get over to the coaster, now!" Diana told them both, trying to keep her own head clear while grabbing Sheila's arm to keep the smaller woman from slipping into hysterics. "Whatever it is, that damned ride has something to do with it! So let's-"

"Oh, no, no, NO!" Terri suddenly shrieked, drawing even more stares from the already curious and gawking crowd.

**O.O.O**

Desperate to find any clue that might tell them what was going on, the Dreamer had shut out everything else and drawn herself completely into her mind, frantically reaching for the vision of that dark and terrifying room before it faded from her memory. She'd easily found the image in her mind, but where was it located in reality? It had to be a real place, she knew that much, and even with as little information as she had, she should be able to find it!

Clutching her temples as everyone else had leaped into action, she tried something that she had never done before and only suspected she could do, but was now desperate enough to attempt: instead of "zooming in" like she had done to read the fine detail of the newspaper in her other vision, this time she decreased her mental magnification until she could step back to see larger and larger pieces of the picture. Almost as if she were a ghostly specter floating in the dream-room, she had drawn back from it, out of it, the room falling away beneath her as she passed ethereally backwards through a stone wall and up through the stone ceiling, which became the floor of the next room her dream-mind entered. Vaguely she noted dim candles on the wall of a murky hallway as she searched, but kept pushing herself backwards, expanding her field of vision, until she could find something, anything, to tell her where she was.

Suddenly she had gone far enough, finding her dream-self outside, looking down on a craggy stone fortress, roughly built into the side of a sheer cliff. And that was when she had screamed.

Oh, no. Not there. Not that fortress. Not HIS fortress!

"That wasn't Hank that took her to the ride!" Terri cried out in a panic, the image fleeing from her mind in her sudden horror. Her knees shook and gave out, and she would have collapsed in a heap had it not been for Rob's quick arms keeping her from hitting the ground. "That was Venger!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

The horrifying thoughts pounding through Hank's mind pushed him to nearly break land-speed records in his desperate charge towards the Dungeons and Dragons ride. Fighting his way through the large Saturday afternoon crowd, he barely even registered the surprised and rude shouts as he blindly pushed his way past the park's visitors.

_Someone's got Caitlin! Someone that looked just like me took my little girl and he's taking her on the Dungeons and Dragons ride! It can't be HIM! Oh God, oh God, please don't let it be HIM!_

Reaching the end of the line of people waiting for their turn on the roller coaster, Hank literally shoved bodies left and right, forcing his way violently towards the platform. Oblivious to the ire of those he pushed aside, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "Stop him! That man has my daughter!" He could only hope that it would do some good. From where he was, he couldn't see the start of the line and had no way of knowing if the impostor had already embarked with Caitlin on the ride.

An employee who had heard the commotion but hadn't been able to make out the words grabbed Hank by the arm as he forced his way by. "Hey, pal!" the man commanded as sternly as possible, which wasn't very impressive considering that he was probably fifty pounds lighter and three inches shorter than Hank. "Take your turn like everyone-" The words were cut short and the employee stumbled backwards, surprised and almost frightened, when Hank jerked out of his supposedly secure grip in less than a second.

"That bastard's taken my daughter!" Hank shouted, gesturing wildly to the front of the line. "I don't know what he wants with her but you've got to help me stop him!"

Being confronted with a possible kidnapping made the park employee, a part-time college student and wanna-be actor by the name of Justin, hesitate in dread. If there was a park protocol for such an event, he'd immediately forgotten his training in the face of a possible emergency. Bewildered, he craned his neck to see the front of the line. "I don't see … I mean, that's just too weird … but, you're not kidding about this, huh?"

Common sense ruled that it would be better to hold up the ride for a few minutes rather than to take the chance that someone really had kidnapped a child and taken her here. "Okay, I'm on it. Phil, you read me?" he said rapidly into his park-issue walkie-talkie as Hank dashed off, leaving stunned and annoyed people shouting about rudeness in his wake. "Stop the ride, 'kay? We've got a guy, says his daughter is missing and he thinks some guy took her here. He's on his way up."

**O.O.O**

"I read you," Phil said into his own walkie-talkie, hitting the red all-stop button on the control panel just as a young man and his daughter were the first to load into the waiting car. He gestured for the next people in line to stop before anyone else could get into the ride. "Sorry, folks," he announced, stepping out of his small booth, "there's gonna be a few minutes' wait here."

"Is there a problem?" the man in the car asked, gripping the bar across the seat with an emotion that didn't quite look like a case of pre-ride jitters. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see people in line rapidly being thrown in every direction. And then, he got a brief view of who was causing such a commotion.

"We've got a missing child report," Phil answered, oblivious to the waves of anger seething from the older of the two passengers. Offering his hand to assist them back out of the car, he began, "If I can ask you to step back onto the platform-"

The man in the car gave an ugly snarl, and Phil literally jumped back a terrified step at the sudden, evil red glow that he thought he had glimpsed behind the man's sunglasses. "God Almighty!"

The child with him was looking the other direction, behind her, wondering what was causing the people in line to act so funny. She had missed the red glow, and was instead naturally curious about why people seemed to be getting knocked around. "Daddy, what-?" she began, then cut herself short with an excited yelp as the car gave a jerk then began to glide forward. The ride had started!

Without any switches flipped by the operator, and without any power to the tracks, the ride had started.

It took a stunned second before Phil recovered. "Hey! I didn't - all stop! All stop!" he shouted as he dashed back into his booth, repeatedly but fruitlessly pounding the red emergency stop button.

"Daddy! We're going!" Caitlin squealed in excitement, bouncing in the seat as much as the lap belt would allow.

"Yes, I know," the man she thought was her father replied calmly.

"VENGER!"

The furious shout made Caitlin jump and twist around in her seat. That was her daddy's voice! But ... but her daddy was right here in the car next to her! Wasn't he? But then who could sound just like her daddy like that?

On the platform, much to her confusion, she could see someone who had pushed his way through the crowd and was now running after the slowly accelerating car. And that someone looked just like her daddy! But..?

The daddy in the roller coaster car with her saw his double, too, and growled a word that she knew would get her grounded from TV for a month if she ever said it. Then he looked ahead of them, staring in cold, calculating anticipation into the darkness of the dragon's mouth, and Caitlin shrank away from him in fear as he began to laugh. It wasn't a very nice laugh like her daddy's; it was mean and cold and it scared her to hear it.

Wanting to scramble out of the car but restrained by the safety bar, Caitlin turned in her seat again, just in time to see the daddy on the platform leap off it and land dangerously in the back seat. The car jolted with his impact, but the man in the front just glanced over his shoulder, continuing that scary laugh.

The evil laugh ended abruptly in a violent curse and a sickening crunch when Hank's fist connected squarely with the man's nose.

Caitlin screamed.

"Fool!" the one in the front seat spat as the car neared its top speed, fending off a second blow with a vicious swipe of claws that seemed to have grown from nowhere. "I could throw you to your death right now!"

"Then we'd both be a sorry mess!" Hank shouted above Caitlin's tearful screams. From his vantage point, he avoided another counterstrike and darted in quickly, managing to get the impostor in a brutal headlock. "If I go, you go too!"

Despite the talons tearing at his arm and clawing at his face, Hank held on for dear life. Not only was his daughter's safety at stake, but since he wasn't buckled in, he'd be dead if he lost his grip on any of the sharps turn the roller coaster took. Those turns were coming up fast; already the car had been swallowed by the mouth of the dragon.

Animatronic monsters, lining the walls but immobilized by the lack of power to the ride, stood as silent witnesses in the dark to the struggle in the speeding car between the two identical Hanks as Caitlin cried in terror. But it was far from silent in the eerie tunnel.

"Give me my daughter back!" Hank shouted, tearing the other's sunglasses away in an attempt to gouge his eyes out.

"Not until I have what I desire, Ranger!" the impostor answered, furious that his plan might have been derailed. Then, he glanced ahead of them, and in spite of his attacker, he laughed.

Caitlin glanced up too, wondering why he was laughing. And why was it getting lighter in the tunnel? Were they close to the end already? There was a light up ahead ...

The car bucked strangely.

"Daddy?"

The shuddering front wheels lifted off the tracks as the car, and not Venger's plan at all, was derailed.

Caitlin screamed in renewed terror.

A hard jolt, and pieces of the car flew in all directions as they hurled faster towards the bright light.

An evilly triumphant laugh.

With a bright flash, the hungrily glowing light enveloped them all.

"Oh, _SHIIIIIIT!_"

**O.O.O**

"Look, you don't understand!"

"We've got to go after them!"

"That man has my daughter!"

"You've got to start it up again!"

Phil reeled beneath the assault of several demands coming at him at once, all of them confusing and some of them just downright weird. "Look, look, I hear you!" he tried to explain, holding up his hands in a hopeful gesture for silence from the six people surrounding him. "I know, I got the word that there was a missing girl, and the guy who was looking for her, he went and jumped on a moving car!"

"That's right! And we need to go after them!"

"Please! You've got to let us on NOW!"

"I can't!" Phil tried to explain, gesturing to the dark ride and the now-empty queue where the unhappy people waiting in line had wandered off after its closure was announced. "The power's shut down. I don't know how that one car pulled out or where it is now, but no more are going to run. I can't - and I WON'T - start the ride again until either the car that's in there now comes out the other end, or when security finds them stalled in the middle somewhere! All right?"

"Listen to us! We have to go in after them! They went- uh, somewhere ..."

Phil squinted at the skinny guy with the glasses who had just spoken. Now this was getting too strange. What was he trying to say? 'Somewhere,' what exactly did he mean? Did he know something about the ride? "They went where?" he asked, slowly and deliberately.

"Well, um," the tall guy with dark hair interjected, stumbling over his words. "They, uh, see, there's an access door about halfway through the ride "

"No, there's not," Phil said flatly. Now there was no question in his mind. These guys were up to something. Even more suspicious was the fact that they looked like they'd been pursued all the way here by a ghost. "I help with the maintenance on this ride," he continued to explain, crossing his arms aggressively and glaring at these punks. He hated it when things got strange. If he had his way, the world would stay nice and sensible and perfectly ordinary all the time. That guy earlier, with the glowing red eyes, had been plenty of weirdness for one week, thank you very much. He was not about to put up with another round of it. "There's no access door."

"There's not? Heh, well," Eric hedged, giving a helpless shrug to his friends. "I guess we just have to do this the hard way." He smiled innocently. And then he belted Phil squarely across the face.

**O.O.O**

Staggering backwards, Phil sagged against the wall of his little booth, then slid to the ground in blissful unawareness, a tiny trickle of blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. "Shoulda listened to us," Eric said with little sympathy. He and Rob grabbed Phil by the arms and legs, dragging him around to the other side of the control panel to leave him slumped out of immediate view, where he would not be too far from help if he needed it, but far enough away that they could finish what they had to do before someone spotted the unconscious body.

"Can you get it running?" Diana asked as Presto stepped into the booth to familiarize himself with the control panel.

"Engineering major, remember?" he said, scanning the dozen or so toggles and buttons with his eyes. "Software, hardware, mechanical equipment, same difference. Okay, got it. Piece of cake," he said when he'd located the proper switches. "Everyone, load up."

Terri, Rob, and Sheila quickly and silently squeezed into the front seat, snapping the safety bar into place as Presto threw the toggles that returned power to the ride. Eric and Diana silently got into the back, squeezing over to leave space for Presto.

"Okay, ready? Here we go!" The switch was flipped.

Before the car had even given that first lurch to indicate the ride was starting, Presto dashed across the platform faster than he'd ever run while being pursued by lizard-men. The car had only barely begun to creep along the tracks when he jumped somewhat awkwardly into the seat left for him. Diana caught his outstretched hand deftly to steady him as he situated himself and then snapped the safety bar into place.

They knew where they were going. There was no question about it. They were heading straight back into the place that they had spent the last four years praying they would never see again.

"We'll get her back, Sheila," were the only words, spoken by Diana, which interrupted this grim ride into the dragon's maw. And then they were silent as they entered the tunnel, ignoring the now-powered robotic monsters that mechanically swung their weapons as the car passed by, shutting out the cheesy sound effects piped in through tinny speakers. Their focus was entirely on one thing: the strange glow ahead of them, which grew exponentially bigger as they approached. In seconds, the colors around them were blending, merging, as if the white hole ahead of them was sucking the hues of the painted walls into it.

"Here it comes," Rob said as the car bounced violently.

O.O.O

Hank had only a dim awareness of where he was, and no notion whatsoever that his jeans and T-shirt were gone, replaced by the familiar feel of a leather tunic and slim, forest green leggings. All he knew was that his daughter was in danger.

"You bastard, she's just a little girl!" Hank roared, launching himself at his duplicate, who, oddly enough, was still in jeans and a T-shirt. "Get away from her!"

His attack with the pocket knife was parried bare-handed, though as a result the impostor received a deep gash to his forearm. Backing away quickly, the pretender held up his hands imploringly and begged, "Please! Whoever you are, stop! Don't hurt my little girl!" He gestured helplessly to the sobbing Caitlin.

Hank's eyes narrowed in determination. "Is that your game? Don't you even try it, you monster!" he shouted, lunging again with the knife.

"Caitlin, quickly, get behind me!" the impostor told the girl, barely dodging the attack. "This crazy man's trying to pretend he's me to fool you!"

"NO!" Hank shouted as he and his double circled each other warily on the dry stretch of barren land on which they had materialized. "Caitlin! Stay away from him! Come here, quickly!"

Confused, frightened, and crying her eyes out, Caitlin had no idea who was who. Nor did she understand where she was, or why she was looking at two nearly identical daddies. She thought one was real and one was pretend, but she didn't know which. One was still dressed in the clothes he had been wearing all day, while the other was wearing a Robin Hood-looking outfit, but they were both calling for her. She didn't know who to go to!

"Daddy?" she cried uncertainly.

"I'm right here, Caitlin!" one of the daddies said.

"Caitlin, it's me!" the other said at the same time.

Even more confused, Caitlin looked desperately back and forth between the two as they lunged and parried again. She didn't know what was going on, and wanted to run to her daddy to protect her, but how could she pick the right one? How could she tell them apart? Except for what they were wearing, they looked the same! But one thing she knew was that her real daddy loved her and wanted to protect her and never, ever scared her. The one in the Robin Hood outfit, wildly attacking the other with that knife, scared her very much. The other one, as far as she could tell, was trying to protect her from the attacker.

She made her choice and ran.

"NO! Caitlin! Get away from him!"

Too late, Caitlin realized she'd made the biggest mistake of her young life when she ran to the calmer and safer-seeming of the two. As soon as she reached for him, she realized it was not her daddy's gentle hand that took hers at all, but sharp, strong claws clamping hard around her wrist.

**O.O.O**

"DADDY!" Caitlin shrieked in terror, squirming desperately to break the iron grip on her little arm. But the impostor who now held her only laughed.

"You BASTARD!" Hank shouted, launching himself at Caitlin's captor with knife aimed to kill. His charge was abruptly stopped, and his neck whiplashed backwards painfully as something invisible but utterly solid slammed him hard in the face at a mere gesture from his double. Stunned, he was thrown backwards several feet to the parched ground that was their battlefield. As he shook the stars out of his eyes and twisted quickly to his feet again, the impostor's laugh changed. It grew deeper. More deadly. And as his voice changed, so did his form.

A malevolent red glow spread from his eyes to his face and then enveloped the rest of his body, obscuring his features from view. His shadowy silhouette altered drastically, and from this glowing red cocoon emerged monstrous bat wings as the red-shrouded figure stretched up to almost double its height. He continued to laugh as the glow intensified one last time, then just as quickly dissipated, revealing the one person Hank had prayed it wouldn't be, but knew all along it would.

Venger.

Caitlin screamed in renewed panic and writhed desperately, trying to free her hand from his painful grip.

"Let her go, Venger!" Hank growled, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, ready to dart for any opening, no matter how slight. "You can't possibly want her!"

"Indeed, I do not, Ranger," Venger growled, all but ignoring the screaming, crying girl beating at his fingers with her free hand. "This child is nothing to me. But she is everything to you. And you shall not have her back until I have what it is that I do desire."

"You know what you'll have? You'll have this knife up your a-" Hank never finished the sentence he'd begun as he charged Venger in utter desperation. Whatever invisible force had hit him last time packed twice the punch now, and he felt his nose give way beneath its assault with an excruciating _pop! _and a gush of blood. The knife flew from his hand as he hit the ground hard, momentarily dazed, too stunned to move.

And in the midst of this pain-colored haze, he thought he heard Venger speak. "You have until the setting of the suns, two days hence," Venger instructed coldly as Hank struggled to focus, pushing himself halfway upright through sheer force of will. "Bring it to me and you will have your child back, alive and unharmed. If not, your child will be boiled alive, then drawn and quartered to be fed to the orc troops. You have two days," he repeated. And then, he laughed.

Terrified, Caitlin stopped fighting and looked around frantically as a fuzzy light physically enveloped her and her captor. Somehow, on some level, she began to understand what was going on. "DAAADEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she screamed over the evil laughter, the trailing sounds the last thing Hank heard as Venger teleported himself and his hostage away.

"CAITLIN!" Hank shouted, and the desperation in his voice was like the cry of a cornered, wounded animal as he struggled to get back to his feet. But it was too late. They were gone. That cruel, heartless monster had taken his beloved child away from him, and there was nothing he could do to help her.

Oblivious to the blood streaming down his face, he managed to drag himself shakily his knees, before succumbing to the shock and slumping in defeat back to the dry, dusty ground. "Oh, God, Caitlin ..."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

When the second roller coaster car disintegrated in the wake of the portal, its abruptly disgorged occupants wasted no time in wondering at their surroundings or studying the altered clothing they wore. Instead, they hit the ground running, hoping against all odds that they'd be in time to help rescue Caitlin from Venger's grasp.

But they were too late, that much they could see within seconds of their arrival. On the ground only a few dozen yards from their landing site, they spotted Hank, bleeding and nearly unresponsive with grief-stricken rage.

Their hearts sank when they realized that Caitlin was nowhere to be found. Whatever Venger was planning, it looked like he'd gotten away with it.

For the moment, they milled around the area uncomfortably, still reeling from the abruptness of it all, and not knowing where to go or what to do next. They were in the Realm again. It had happened too fast to even think about the consequences. And once they'd gotten Hank back on his feet and managed to get a coherent story out of him, even worse news was confirmed. Venger had teleported away with Caitlin right before his helpless eyes.

Reality sank in hard then. Overwhelmed and unable to accept the horrors that had happened so quickly, Sheila flew into hysterics and screamed violently at Hank for _allowing_ Venger to take their daughter, of somehow not doing enough, of not caring enough about their child to stop him. In angry response, Hank, still half-irrational from pain and adrenaline, had shouted some ugly things about Sheila not knowing her own husband well enough to recognize the strange behavior of a two-bit impostor in the amusement park, viciously blaming her for _allowing_ Venger to walk off with Caitlin in the first place.

Uncertain where this violent argument might lead, their friends quickly intervened before things got worse. As upset as Diana, Eric, and the others were, they nonetheless managed to reign in their own emotions and physically impose themselves between Hank and Sheila, separating them long enough to make them calm down and realize they were both angrily attacking one another only because the real target for their rage, Venger, was conveniently absent.

It made sense, and at last got them to stop arguing, which Diana insisted was doing nothing but wasting precious time. With tempers finally deflating, they'd hugged and sincerely apologized with tears in their eyes, each swearing to the other that, somehow, they would get their daughter back alive and well.

The problem was that none of them really knew what to do now. While some undefined magic had returned various versions of their old costumes, albeit with some changes, most notably the fur vest that Rob now wore under the cross-straps of his larger Barbarian outfit and the dark purple leggings that completed Sheila's still-short tunic, they did not have their familiar Weapons that had become such natural extensions of themselves in their previous stay in the Realm. Nor did they have any sense of which direction Venger's fortress lay. Unless they could think of something soon, it looked like they just might have to acquiesce to Venger's demand.

"We need our Weapons," Diana said in frustration. "That's all there is to it. Much as I'm ready to rip Venger to shreds for this, we just can't take him on by ourselves."

"And what if we just give him what he wants?" Sheila countered as she tried to give Hank's bloodied face some first aid. "This is Caitlin we're talking about!"

"Ow!" Hank complained as Sheila got a little too emphatic in her emotional state. "Careful with the bedside manner, would you? You're the one studying to be a nurse!"

"Sorry, sorry," Sheila apologized hastily, trying to pay closer attention to her pained husband. Sighing in frustration, she noted their distinct lack of supplies. "I wish there was something I could do to make it better, but without some gauze or a cold-pack or something, I'm kind of stuck."

Cringing in sympathy while deftly deflecting attention from Hank's pained outburst and Sheila's apology, Diana turned to the rest of the group. "You know what will happen if we give it to Venger," she commented grimly.

"Yeah, and Hank told us what will happen if we don't," Eric replied darkly. Crossing his arms, he kicked angrily at a rock by his toe. "Damn Venger, he's been determined to ruin our lives since we first met him!" Dropping his voice to confidential levels, he added under his breath, "And he couldn't have picked a better way to hurt us all, could he?"

"Well, so much for the Prophecy," Terri shrugged helplessly. She seemed mildly intrigued by the craftsmanship of the costume she now wore, mainly because she needed something, anything to focus on. If circumstances were different, she would take the time to really admire how flattering it was. Over a pair of sleek, dark blue satin tights, she had on a slim, blue velvet tunic, embroidered in sparkling silver with tiny stars and runes that she did not know how to read. The tunic reached her hips and was fitted with a thin black belt, but from her shoulders, a cape of similar material cascaded all the way to her knees. A pair of black leather boots, reaching just below her knees, completed the outfit. The neckline of the tunic was cut to frame and emphasize the heart-shaped locket she still wore. "I'm sorry, guys," she apologized to the group. "I just don't remember having a dream about this. I guess I'm not being much help here. If we knew exactly what that Gem thing was supposed to do, that would at least be something to go on!"

"But we do know," Hank said, sitting back and touching his bruised face gingerly. "At least, we sort of know." A pause, and then he shrugged helplessly. "Well, okay, I guess you're right. We only know what it's supposed to do, just not how it does it. But frankly, at the moment, I couldn't care less. Thanks, honey, that feels a lot better."

Looking at him in surprise, Sheila frowned and informed him, "But I didn't do anything!"

"Okay, guys, I don't even have to tell you how serious th-" Hank paused in mid-word when Sheila's comment finally sunk in, and he turned to stare at her in confusion. "What do you mean? Sure you did something. It feels great! It's stopped hurting and everything."

"Yeah, and the bruise is already fading," a mystified Sheila told him, directing the curious attention of the others to Hank's injury as she spoke. "But I mean it, I seriously didn't do a thing!"

"Well, whatever you didn't do, Sis, you did a good job!" Rob told her in awe. When they'd found Hank, still reeling from his fight with Venger, he looked like he'd volunteered his face to be the warm-up punching bag before a round of championship prize boxing. Sheila was fairly convinced he had a broken nose, which would definitely leave him with two black eyes at the minimum. But now, even as they watched, they witnessed what ought to have been days' worth of recovery ticking away in mere minutes.

Bewildered, Sheila continued to protest. "I didn't do a thing to make it better except wish there was something I could do to make it better!"

Upon hearing her own statement as she spoke it, Sheila looked distinctly uncomfortable. That wasn't possible. Was it? Sure, long ago she'd come to accept some pretty strange occurrences as utterly commonplace in the Realm, but could merely wishing an injury better have that effect? No, there had to be something else going on here.

"Well, whatever," Eric's voice interrupted her thoughts. "Right now it looks like ol' Horn Head has us over a barrel. Either we give him what he wants, or else we try to take him on bare-handed."

"Neither of which is a viable option."

They'd never gotten used to it, despite the years they had spent in the Realm. The familiar voice speaking to them from a spot that had been vacant only the second before was still enough to make them all jump.

"Dungeon Master!" the seven of them chorused in perfect unison.

Some things just never changed.

Visibly appearing no different than he had when he first approached the group of lost and bewildered Young Ones over eight years ago, Dungeon Master emerged from behind a scraggly clump of something like dry sagebrush, smiling sadly at the sight of their familiar faces. Though in the past few years he'd often longed to see his favorite students again, he had hoped it would never be under such circumstances as these. This secretly wished-for reunion was now tinged with a bittersweet flavor. "Hello again, my pupils."

Recovering from the moment of surprise, they all spoke at once, gesturing wildly while trying to tell Dungeon Master what had happened. In this jumble of phrases and statements and corrections, the words "Venger" and "Caitlin" became the urgent theme.

"Please, my young friends," Dungeon Master asked, holding up his hands for peace. "I am already very aware of what has occurred. I regret that I cannot simply bring your daughter to you," he explained, his apologetic look silencing Hank and Sheila before they could ask it of him. "Venger would not be so foolish as to leave her in an area accessible to my magics."

Crowding in front of the others, Eric belligerently faced off with Dungeon Master in an annoyed stance no different than the hundreds of other times those two had not seen eye to eye. "Okay, then, Mr. I-Wear-Short-Shorts," he demanded, already falling back into his habit of commenting on Dungeon Master's height, or lack thereof, "so is there anything you can do, or did you just show up to tell us that you're still going to be just as useless as ever?"

"Indeed, as your arrival here has a purpose, Cavalier, mine does so as well," Dungeon Master replied, completely unfazed by the outburst. Raising a hand glowing gold with power, he continued, "I have come to return these to you."

"All riiiight!" Eric exclaimed, the animosity of a moment ago disappearing from his voice just as quickly as his long-since abandoned Shield appeared on his left arm. "Now you're talking!"

Diana echoed the sentiment while already deftly twirling her Staff over her head and around her back to reacquaint herself with the feel of it. "We're back in business! Now tell us where Venger is so we can get Caitlin out of there before he has the chance to do anything else!"

"No, my young friends," Dungeon Master instructed, and a slight but familiar change in his voice indicated that he was slipping into Riddle Mode. "Go not where Venger is, but where he expects you to be."

"And where _exactly_ is that?" Hank asked with a hint of warning as he spoke. His daughter's life was at stake here; this time he had no intention of playing the waiting game while trying to decipher the traditionally vague and confusing instructions, not when they had such precious little time. "Venger didn't say anything about meeting him somewhere. He said we have two days, that's it."

"That which Venger must never possess shall lead you to the place where it must not be, hidden beyond the Sands of Muswaf, where the four suns set," Dungeon Master advised them evenly. Noticing that the Ranger seemed ready to have an apoplectic fit because the answer wasn't straightforward enough, he nonetheless continued, "There you will find the child, but there Venger must never find what he seeks. Do you remember the Prophecy?"

"Yeah, yeah," Eric said before Hank had the chance to explode. In his years in the Realm, Eric had become the group's expert at memorizing Dungeon Master's riddles and other, similarly confusing but important phrases, even if he usually left it to others to figure out the actual meaning of the words. Clearing his throat, he drew himself up and recited, "_When Death first outstretched her slender white hand, the Veil of the Dead wept a tear of stone. Though Death's subjects are hers forever, at the passing of four millennia and one, through the threadbare Veil those who have entered her kingdom shall reach in vain. Yet with the Sadness of the Veil at his command, one shall stand and call forth his ilk, and a dark shadow of evil shall roam the land even in brightest of day. Eternal darkness shall be spared the Realm only if the Tear of the Veil be placed in the hands of a child_."

Dungeon Master nodded sagely. "Precisely."

Still not quite understanding these ancient words, Presto shrugged and said, "Well, it's not like we had any question about what Venger wants. But I'd say the part in the Prophecy about placing it in the hands of a child was wrong, 'cause Rahmoud did that and you can see where that got us." He shrugged helplessly. "I guess I don't get it."

"You will understand, in time," Dungeon Master began.

"No!" Hank snapped, almost throwing his Bow to the ground in frustration. "I want to understand right now! This is my little girl you're talking about! I mean I mean " Gulping down a deep lungful of air, Hank forcibly calmed himself into a state of mind that Dungeon Master might actually choose to respond to. "I mean, yeah, I'm grateful that you brought everyone in the second car here to help me get her back, but please help us out again and DON'T start confusing us with your riddles!"

"You are mistaken, Ranger," Dungeon Master informed him evenly. "I did not enable the portal to bring the second group of you here. That was Venger's doing as well. He knew not which of you carried the artifact he seeks. I believe he kidnapped your child in hopes that you would all follow as a group, so that he might determine who possessed it at a later time. It is doubtful that he expected any resistance." As he said that, he almost seemed to give Hank a brief smile of acknowledgment. Just as quickly, though, the expression faded into one of grim seriousness. "But this is only guesswork, my pupils. I was not aware of Venger's plans until your arrival, though now his timing is clear in hindsight. And it seems that, despite the resistance he found, he has managed to accomplish his goal nonetheless. So you have but two days, my once-again pupils, to prevent him from further success."

"You mean we have two days to get Caitlin back! That's all I'm worried about and I don't care what it takes!" Rob interrupted, and it was obvious from his tone that the thought of thwarting Venger's ambiguous plans was going to take a back seat to ensuring his niece's safety. From the nods he received, it was clear that the others felt the same.

Dungeon Master frowned and shook his head sorrowfully. "I am sorry, but the Gem of Shahvin must be kept safe at all costs."

"I thought it was supposed to be safe!" Sheila exploded, unable to express the utter horror she felt in hearing Dungeon Master so easily dismiss the life of her only child. "We all did! Or else Rahmoud would have never trusted me with it and sent it with us!" Digging in the pouch hanging from the sash around her waist, a new addition to her costume, she found what she was looking for and brandished it in frustration at Dungeon Master. "I personally wasn't sure if he was right or not, but he ... hey, what's wrong with this thing?"

All eyes turned to the Gem of Shahvin, dangling from Sheila's key ring as it sparkled in the light of the four suns, and they were startled to see the change. Sheila was right. Something was very different about the stone. Not two hours ago, when Sheila had inadvertently shown it to Michelle in the amusement park, it had been a beautiful, clear diamond tinted with only the faintest hint of pale blue, faintly streaked with a wispy band of 'smoke' that was only visible up close. Between then and now, though, it had mysteriously gone from its sparkling clarity to an even sky-blue, so anyone looking at it would have thought Sheila was holding a large, exquisite piece of brilliant aquamarine. Inexplicably, the smoke trail was now a substantial streak of cloudy indigo, clearly visible from several yards away. And most eerily of all, the smoke was noticeably swirling, like storm clouds slowly gathering before a hurricane.

"Dungeon Master, why's it doing - OOOOOH! He did it again!" Sheila exclaimed.

None of them really had to turn around to see for themselves, but out of old habit they did anyway, looking over their shoulders at the spot where Dungeon Master wasn't. "Here we go again," Eric sighed, rolling his eyes. "Nice to see some things stay the same."

"Well, come on guys," Hank said, falling back into the role of group leader, one which he had never really abandoned, even in the years after they had finally returned to Earth. As Terri and Presto, who had been sitting on some nearby rocks, got to their feet, Hank quickly got his bearings in the landscape they had hoped to never see again. "He said the Sands of Muswaf are where the four suns set. That's west. Let's go."

**O.O.O**

To say that events were going _mostly_ according to plan would be just about right.

While Venger had very little power to directly influence his hated enemies from across the worlds, the child's youth had made her immature and defenseless mind a much easier target to manipulate. And though the sheer dimensional distance meant he did not have the ability to grasp and possess her thoughts entirely, stirring up the memories of her infancy had proved surprisingly easy. His original intent was to alarm her parents and their friends into making a misstep with the Gem of Shahvin, perhaps blaming it for the child's resurgence of unwanted memories. With luck, whichever of them possessed the Gem would try to rid themselves of it, and then, it would be his prize to claim.

Venger had nearly laughed when the 'misstep' he'd manipulated the Young Ones into was bringing both the child and the Gem to their little amusement park, and he quickly adjusted his plan accordingly. There, hidden beneath several layers of reality, the portal between the two worlds still pulsed like a quasar, waiting for the right spell or the right conditions to open it. There, he could step through to the homeworld of these thrice-cursed humans, and, so long as he neither strayed far from the portal nor overtaxed his reserve of magic, he would be able to apprehend the child and put the next step of his revised plan into motion.

The last thing that Venger had expected was for one of those accursed Young Ones to figure out what he was doing so quickly and jump into that attraction's carriage with him. He'd wanted to bring them later, at his leisure, rather than making such a hurried escape. But even that had turned out in his favor. Not only did he succeed in taking the child, but he was able to deliver his ultimatum at the same time. Thus he was spared the extra annoyance of reappearing to his nemeses at a later time, to make absolutely certain those bloody fools understood his demands.

And no doubt, Venger guessed, before very long at all, Dungeon Master would play right into his hands by giving the Young Ones the information they needed - the information _he_ needed - to send them on their way. Soon, despite the near-setback, everything would fall neatly into place precisely as he had arranged.

There was only one minor problem.

He had absolutely no idea what to do about this child.

Looking down at the girl whose wrist he still gripped as they materialized within the dank, stony foyer of his fortress, Venger almost smiled in grim bemusement. What he'd expected was a terrified, easily-cowed child that would cry in terror at the very sight of his demonic form, a frightened hostage that would not offer him even a hint of trouble as he kept her over the next two days. What he'd gotten, however, was nothing short of a wildcat on a leash.

As Caitlin literally screeched and clawed and bit at the hand holding her wrist, putting up a fight that would be commendable for someone even twice her size, Venger would have dearly loved to slap her face to bring an end to this nonsense and put some real fear in her. One good blow, that ought to knock her to the ground and make her understand his power over her. Slowly, deliberately, making sure she saw every move, Venger raised his open hand, clearly aiming to backhand her across the mouth.

But just as he was about to swing his arm down and knock her senseless, he paused, his clawed fingers balling into a fist as he snarled at himself in annoyance. He had just recalled his own words to the Ranger, spoken bare minutes ago: _Bring it to me and you will have your child back, alive and unharmed_.

Little did it matter to him that he did not intend to let those Young Ones live a moment beyond their usefulness to him had ended. He had promised that the child would not be harmed, and his twisted sense of honor bound him to uphold his part of the bargain ... just until they surrendered to him the Gem of Shahvin.

Silently cursing himself, and then doubly cursing this spirited child, Venger reached down and roughly grabbed her chin, turning her face up to look into his despite her shriek of protest. Because of his own bargain, he had forbidden himself from harming her physically, but terrifying the rebellion out of her was an entirely different and completely permissible matter. Scowling into her face, he let out a cold, cruel sound that might have been a humorless laugh. "You are clearly your mother's child," he said icily, getting a good look at her features for the first time, "but those are your father's eyes. Defiant. Proud. I will NOT stand for such insolent rebellion, child, from you or anyone else! Do I make myself clear? If you-"

"My daddy's gonna make you sorry!" Caitlin screamed at Venger, interrupting him before he had the chance to make his threats. "He's gonna come here and he's gonna make you sorry!"

"Bah!" Venger laughed, seizing the opportunity to mentally torture the little girl by twisting and poisoning her idolizing love for her parents. Children – they made it so easy! With a cruel parody of a smile on his cold lips, he sneered, "Your father is a weakling. So long as I have you, child, he will capitulate and do whatever I desire. He would even doom his friends to die if I so command it. After all, his will broke like a brittle twig when I held your uncle as I now have you."

"You take that back!" Caitlin demanded, her face starting to flush an angry red at what Venger was telling her. Even if she didn't quite comprehend everything, she understood it was something mean about her daddy.

"Why, child? It is the truth. Your fath- AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!" Venger howled in surprise more than from pain as a very angry Caitlin kicked him in the shins.

"Take it back! Take it back!" she screamed, violently kicking Venger's leg in what was probably the most spectacular temper tantrum she'd ever thrown. "I hate you! You take it back about my daddy! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"

As he dodged the annoyance the child's wild attack, Venger's own temper finally exploded as well. This defenseless girl was either extremely brave or extremely naive to think she could attack him, but either way, he would not tolerate this impertinence!

Attempting to grab the child's wrist again, he was thwarted by her flailing little fists as she kept coming at him like a berserk halfling. At that moment, the particular irony of being bested by a six-year-old child when he had just so easily defeated her father was not lost on Venger. Bolstered by the thought, he managed to reach over her fists and grab one of her blonde pigtails.

Caitlin screamed as Venger yanked hard on her hair, but the Dark Lord ignored her wailing protests. "I warned you, child, I will NOT stand for this insolence!" he hissed, jerking on her pigtail and half-dragging her out of the room as she shrieked and clawed at his fingers in a vain attempt to break his cruel grip. He had not the patience to deal with this screaming brat, not now, when it was vital that his plans proceed on such a tight schedule! If he was to succeed, then he'd just have to lock this uncooperative creature away in a dark cell somewhere in the bowels of his fortress until he had need of her again!

**O.O.O**

Hours had passed as endless miles leading west trudged by in near-silence, until darkness began to fall. Already it was night, and the group of adventurers once known as the Young Ones were no closer to finding Venger's fortress or devising a way to rescue Hank and Sheila's daughter than they had been the moment they had been flung through the portals that brought them back to this world. They pushed themselves ahead at a back-breaking pace, not wanting to stop until Caitlin was safely in her parents' arms again, but when the moons had risen and the strange yet familiar constellations were shining in the night sky, Diana forcibly called the group to a stop.

"We're gonna kill ourselves if we keep going like this," she had reasoned. "And we all remember how easy it is to get turned around in the dark here, right? I know nobody wants to hear this, but we'll do Caitlin more good if we stop to rest than if we kept marching all night."

Gnarled, branching trees grew in wild groves along their way. It was under the modest protection of their tangled canopy that the weary travelers gathered wood for a small fire and made camp.

Off and on through the day's trek, Presto had quietly experimented with his Hat, hoping ardently that his magical item would behave better this time around. And perhaps time had indeed mellowed the enchanted headwear, or maybe it was Presto's own age and maturity that let him control it better. Either way, the Magician found that it was inclined to be more cooperative, a fact that did not escape the notice of his friends. Who could say for certain if this departure from the sensational misfires they had come to accept as normal might mean the difference between survival or disaster?

Of course, it wasn't perfect. In his first attempt to conjure blankets for everyone to sleep under this night, the Hat had instead offered up several of the dough-wrapped sausage treats known as "pigs in blankets."

Shrugging it off, Presto told the others, with a perfectly straight face, "Dinner's served!"

No one seemed to realize his mistake, or if they did, they didn't mention it, and the food was vastly appreciated and accepted without question since they'd walked so far with nothing to eat since a sugary amusement-park lunch. Presto dug in with the others, never letting on that anything had gone amiss, and his second attempt accurately produced several thick, woolen blankets for the night.

But no one was sleeping under those blankets yet. Though they sorely needed the rest, how would it be possible to sleep when they were all sick with worry? What might Venger do to Caitlin if they didn't give in to his demands? What would happen to the Realm if they did? How could they even find where they were supposed to go?

Terri was the only one attempting to sleep. It was as difficult a prospect for her as it was for the others, but she was trying to doze off in hopes of having a dream that might help them in some way. Unfortunately, the act of forcing oneself to fall asleep usually holds a limited prospect of success. At length she sighed heavily, rolling onto her side to see how the others were faring.

Closest to her, near the fire, Eric and Diana were sitting on either side of Sheila, trying to find some way of comforting the grief-stricken Thief. Sheila had been fraying at the edges all afternoon, and now that they'd stopped to rest, she was clearly showing signs of breaking down under the weight of the worry over what might happen to her beautiful daughter if they failed.

Eric and Diana felt her loss almost as sharply as she did, though sadly, they could offer her no real hope, just hollow promises that everything would work out somehow.

"I don't understand!" Sheila said for at least the twentieth time, blaming what she saw as Rahmoud's misinterpretation of the Prophecy for putting them in such a situation. "Why did he have to do this to us? To Caitlin?"

"He did what he thought the Prophecy said," Diana patiently explained again. She knew that Sheila was far too distraught to really take the words to heart, but she had to say something, for her own sanity as much as for Sheila's. Maybe cold logic wouldn't appeal to a mother whose only child had been kidnapped for ransom, but the once-again Acrobat hoped that getting Sheila to talk might somehow help, however much or little. "When he realized we were about to leave, he knew that the safest place to put the Gem was on an entirely different world, our world, where none of us thought Venger could ever get to it. You know that's why he did it, he gave it to us because he always considered us his children. That's what the Prophecy said, right Eric? That the Realm would be spared from darkness if the Gem was placed in the hands of a child."

"Well, he was wrong!" Sheila sighed, too emotionally drained from the afternoon's events to summon sufficient energy to burst out with it again. Leaning into Diana's comforting hug, she continued sadly, "He should have given it to you or Presto-"

"And the result would have been the same," Eric tried to explain. "You heard Dungeon Midget. He didn't think Venger knew which of us had it. And no matter if you did or I did or Diana did, you know for a fact that we all would have gone charging after Venger the moment he grabbed Caitlin anyway, just like we did. And if Rahmoud had given that thing to Caitlin, 'cause age-wise she was the only real 'child' among us at the time ..." Trailing off quietly, he paused to watch the tiny, orange embers from the fire as they floated up in a lazy spiral and winked out, one by one. Everyone knew where he was going with that line of reasoning, so it was almost unnecessary when he continued softly, "Then Venger would have it already."

"At least this way, we have a chance," Diana tried to smile, but her efforts did little to lift any of the group's collective spirits, least of all her own. She lapsed into silence, looking around the camp at the others and wishing there was something else she could say that didn't sound like such a canned platitude. The sharp sound of something heavy impacting a wooden target startled her out of her thoughts and drew her attention towards the silently brooding Rob.

In severely stressful times like this, Rob was never a talker like his sister, though his anger at Venger and his fear for Caitlin's safety seethed every bit as hot. Keeping his emotions inside all day had wound him up like a clock spring. While he would have liked to simply sit with Terri and feel the soothing relief of her presence, disturbing her now would be counterproductive to her efforts at sleeping and perchance dreaming, so his only other option was to go to the other side of the camp and work off his aggression by pitching rocks at a tree trunk as hard as he could. Every few seconds, a dull _crack! _echoed across the camp as he struck his target.

Presto, on the other hand, was so lost in a state of concentration that he did not even hear the sound of Rob's projectile assault on the tree. What held the Magician's fascinated attention was the Gem of Shahvin as he held it up to the orange glow of the campfire and studied its altered appearance. He sat cross-legged on the ground before the fire, a feat which was easier now because the rune-embroidered robes he wore this time were split up the front and belted together at the waist, revealing the dark blue leggings he had always worn beneath. But this greater freedom of movement was the furthest thing from his mind as he tried to comprehend the evolution of the Gem's appearance. He knew what it had looked like when Rahmoud first gave it to Sheila for years of safekeeping, he knew what it had looked like when Sheila pulled it out of her pouch when Dungeon Master appeared, and he knew what it looked like now. Something was going on with this gemstone, that was certain. He just wished he knew what.

He was more than positive that it was not a trick of the darkness and firelight that made the stone appear even darker than before. And now that he'd had the chance to watch it, he could see that the swirling, smoky trail of indigo inside the gem surged sluggishly against its side, almost as if it were trying to break through one of the many sparkling facets.

Or ... or trying to point at something like a compass.

"Wait a minute …" he muttered to no one in particular. That almost made sense.

Turning the stone halfway around in his hands, he then held it still, and nodded to himself when he observed the results. To be certain, he did it again, rotating the Gem another quarter turn and waiting to see what happened. Yes, the dark imperfection inside the gem was definitely homing in on something just slightly to the northwest of the direction they'd been heading. And though Presto had an educated guess what that 'something' could be, he couldn't recall precisely was it that Dungeon Master had said about it.

The Magician frowned. During their time on Earth, he'd gotten a little out of practice and found he couldn't quite remember Dungeon Master's exact words. That, he knew, could be detrimental. Through many costly and even near-fatal errors, they'd learned long ago that just getting the gist of the riddles wasn't ever going to be enough. Fortunately, the group had a resident expert on that very topic. "Hey, Eric?" he called quietly. "C'mere a sec."

With a quick glance to see that Diana had Sheila's emotional state at least somewhat under control, the Cavalier got up and crossed to the other side of the campfire. "What's up?"

"What did Dungeon Master say earlier?" Presto asked without preamble. "About the thing that Venger wasn't supposed to have leading us somewhere?"

"Oh, um," Eric muttered, the gears almost visibly shifting in his mind as he retrieved the requested information. "He said, '_That which Venger must never possess shall lead you to the place where it must not be, hidden beyond the Sands of Muswaf, where the four suns set. There you will find the child, but there Venger must never find what he seeks_.' Why? You got it all figured out or something?"

"I think so," Presto explained. "The thing 'which Venger must never possess' is this gem."

"That's a given," Eric shrugged, nudging the half-burned firewood into a tighter pile with his metal-encased toe. "Got any more news flashes for us?"

"Yeah. It's pointing at something."

Eric's entire attitude changed in a heartbeat. Reflexively, he almost yanked the Gem out of Presto's hand for a closer look, but stopped himself in time and let the Magician explain. Obligingly, Presto pointed out how no matter which way he turned the stone, the smoke within it always righted itself and slowly turned to flow within the Gem towards something on the northwest horizon.

Nodding in respect of this finding, Eric asked, "You think it's pointing us to Venger's fortress, where Caitlin is?"

Presto shook his head. "No, 'cause Dungeon Master said something about us not going where Venger is but where he wants us to be. I'll bet it's pointing to that Veil thingy in the Prophecy. You know, 'cause this is what Venger seeks but what we can't let him have, and the last place we want it is to be is right there at that Veil thing where he can use it!"

Pausing to work through the logic of that one, Eric admitted, "Well, we've had less to go on and still came out on top." Absently patting Presto's shoulder, he said, "You tell the girls. I'll go let Hank know."

Eric found Hank a little away from the others, his back to the camp, leaning his shoulder against the rough bark of one of the ancient trees as he stared silently at the thousands of tiny points of starlight twinkling obliviously in the night sky. Even several paces away, the Cavalier could physically feel the seething waves of his friend's pent-up, helpless rage, and he hesitated just a moment. Hank rarely got this angry; it took a lot to push the Ranger to this level. But with his little daughter's life on the line, Eric couldn't blame him a bit. "Hey, Hank?" he said softly. "Presto may be on to something."

There was no answer.

"Um," Eric tried again after a few uncomfortable seconds, fighting the absurd impulse to place his Shield between himself and his friend. "Presto thinks the Gem might be pointing us in the direction we should be going."

Another few seconds passed. Then, finally, without turning around, Hank spoke. "You didn't hear her, Eric."

Eric fidgeted at the icy-cold rage in the Ranger's voice. If he hadn't realized it before, he now understood clearly why Hank hadn't been over by the campfire trying to comfort his distraught wife. How could he offer any calming comfort to her when he himself was this close to losing control? Proceeding gingerly, the Cavalier asked cautiously, "Um, hear what?"

"You didn't hear her," Hank repeated. "You didn't hear your own daughter screaming for you, screaming for help, and knowing there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it."

"I can't begin to imagine," Eric admitted. It was more like he didn't want to imagine, didn't want to vicariously feel the gut-wrenching horror of seeing that precious little six-year-old disappear into the clutches of the Force of Evil. He'd go crazy if he did. "But we're gonna get her back, Hank. Presto may have found a way to get to her, and get to Venger."

Finally, Hank turned around to look at his friend. The injuries to his face had long since healed; there was not even the faintest trace of a bruise to betray the fact that just a few hours ago, the attack of an invisible force field had broken his nose and blackened his eyes. But the deadly cold anger had not faded from his voice as he ground out, "I want you to understand something. If Venger does anything, ANYTHING AT ALL, to Caitlin, I WILL kill him this time! And nothing you, or Sheila, or anyone else can do will stop me."

"STOP you?" Eric gave a mirthless laugh at that. "Hank, if Venger hurts Caitlin, I'll be right there next to you breaking his neck with my bare hands if I have to!"

Hank almost seemed relieved to hear this; a degree of the tension visibly left his shoulders. Letting out a shaky sigh, he nodded once to acknowledge the support, raked his fingers through his long hair, and turned to reach for his Bow which was leaning up against the tree.

"We'll get her back," Eric assured again.

"Yeah," Hank agreed, and Eric found himself wholeheartedly agreeing with the unspoken, _or else!_ in Hank's tone.

Eric was about to step back towards the warmth of the campfire, when something he saw made him freeze in place in alarm.

All he had seen was Hank pausing strangely just as his hand came to rest on the grip of his Bow, standing stock-still and staring silently into the darkness around them. Something, whatever it was, had escaped the Cavalier's notice. But knowing from long experience to trust the Ranger's instincts, Eric quickly looked around, straining his eyes into the dark night to find whatever it was that Hank had seen or heard or sensed.

Abruptly, the Ranger straightened, whipping his Bow up just a moment before Eric pointed and said, "Uh, oh!"

"I see it," Hank replied to Eric's warning, but he did not draw an arrow. It was too late to get a good bead on the dun horse as its dark rider spurred it into a distant stand of trees near the foot of a little hill. He could have never gotten a good shot off. In seconds, the swift steed was nothing but pale flashes between the shadowy tree trunks, soon disappearing entirely behind the protection of the rocky hill. How long the rider had been watching the small group, and who he was now riding off to report to, was anyone's guess.

"Look alive, everyone," Hank called to the others, who immediately silenced their hushed conversations at the familiar note of warning in their leader's voice. "We've just been spotted."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

_Scrrratch! Scrrratch!_

"Little hew-man children make a tasssty sssnack!"

The two lizard men lurking outside the cell door snickered to themselves when they heard the tearful cry of "Go away!" from inside the locked room. Human children were enjoyably easy sport to scare, an amusing game that never grew old for the dungeon guards. Though Venger had explicitly ordered that the girl was not to be harmed, he had never said anything against having a little fun by frightening her. Of course, they weren't really going to eat her - not unless her parents failed in their task - but the child was sure to be terrified by the very idea.

One of them scraped his claws noisily down the door again as the other hissed, "We're opening the door, little girl! We're coming in!"

"You go away!" Caitlin screamed again as the sound of keys rattled in the lock. As the old wooden door creaked outward on protesting hinges, she huddled in the farthest corner and blinked against the glow of the torch that the lizard men carried. Until then, the only light she had was the dim flicker of a torch halfway down the hall filtering through the tiny, barred window near the top of the cell door. Being locked in a strange, dark, silent room, even for just the few hours she'd been here so far, was already taking its toll on the child. The cold, dank air was only part of the reason that she was shivering. She was, as the lizard men could see, just plain scared.

The coldly sneering lizard men had a purpose for being there. When he ordered that the prisoner was not to be harmed, Venger had grudgingly instructed his servants to provide the child with basic necessities so that her parents would see that she was well when it came time to demand the Gem of Shahvin from them. These two had come to her cell with a bucket of water and a crusty loaf of dry bread, according to their Master's wishes, though it was far more entertaining to make her think that they had come to size her up for their own breakfast.

"Hm," the lizard man known as Karg appraised, striding towards the corner that Caitlin backed herself into. He bared his jagged teeth in a grin as his intimidating size visibly affected the girl's fear level. She squirmed backwards into the unyielding wall as the creature loomed over her imposingly.

"Maybe ssshe wouldn't make sssuch a niccce meal jussst yet, ssshe's a bit on the ssskinny ssside," Karg hissed after a long moment, squatting down until his frightening, fanged visage was right in Caitlin's face. Giving the girl a less-than-gentle poke in the ribs, he half-turned his head towards his companion and gave a conspiratorial flick of his forked tongue, which served in lieu of a wink since lizard men had no eyelids.

"Leave me alone!" Caitlin screamed at them, trying with all her might to shove Karg away, but the second lizard man, by the name of Grosk, just laughed as he set down the bread and water. "Make sssure you eat your breakfassst all up, little girl," he instructed. "We want you niccce and fat by dinner time!"

"You go away!" Caitlin shouted with as much six-year-old courage as she could muster. "I'm gonna get out of here and my daddy's going to make you sorry 'cause you're so mean to me!" The words were braver than she felt, and it showed on her face. But she'd never been one to back down when a bully was teasing her on the schoolyard, and though they were really scary-looking, these creatures were just the big, ugly, scaly version of a bully.

"Ha!" Karg barked, sneering down at the child, seeing through her facade of bravado. "You're not going anywhere! Not without thessse!" He jingled the ring of keys that hung from his belt tauntingly. "And we'd be more than glad for your 'daddy' to come try to take usss on!"

"Go away!" Caitlin shrieked again, watching the keys with longing in her teary eyes. The lizard-men just laughed at her obvious efforts to come up with some sort of childish, useless plan to get the keys and escape her cell.

"Let'sss go," Karg suggested with a scaly smile. "Ssshhe needsss to fatten up a bit!" Laughing a mocking hiss, Karg rose and left the child sniffling and huddled in the corner.

"That wasss amusssing," Grosk hissed as they pushed the heavy door shut, closing in their young prisoner and leaving her in the cold, gloomy near-darkness of the cell.

"Yesss," Karg agreed, reaching to lock the heavy iron mechanism in the door. "And maybe nexssst time we ssshould ...What in the name of the Namelesss One?"

With quickness that surprised even his companion, Karg grabbed the handle and flung the door open so hard that it swung faster than its rusty hinges should have allowed, and hit the opposite wall with a loud _CRACK!_ "Hand them over now, child!" he snarled in an angry hiss.

The suddenness of the door flying open and the lizard man shouting made Caitlin jump with a frightened cry. She tried to hide her hands behind her back, but it was too late. Karg had clearly seen his ring of keys clutched in her little fingers.

"I sssaid, give them back!" Karg demanded again, darting across the room and grabbing her by the front of her jumper when she made no move to obey. The keys were jerked from her hand, and then the furious creature, having lifted her several inches, unceremoniously dropped her to the floor. Though she landed on her feet, she quickly fell to her bottom, crawling backwards away from the scary monster and into the corner, where she wrapped her arms around her knees and scrunched up her face in a serious attempt to not cry in front of these mean things.

The lizard man hardly noticed. Storming out of the room, he tried to ignore Grosk's raspy snicker at how that pathetic little human child had nearly gotten the better of him. Slamming the door with a very peeved grumble, he securely locked it and hung the ring of keys back on his belt where they belonged.

Finally, Grosk could contain his mirth no longer. "Ssshhhe's a quick one, isssn't ssshe?" he asked with a rasp in his reptilian voice that might have been a giggle. "Didn't even sssee her take them, did you?"

Karg, of course, had no way of knowing that Grosk was simply not owning up to the fact that he hadn't seen Caitlin snitch the keys either. Stomping away, his mood now fouled even more than usual, Karg only knew that Grosk would never let him live this down. By tomorrow morning, the entire lizard man garrison would know. And they'd all laugh. Stupid Grosk!

"Lord Venger sssaid that child'sss mother isss the Thief," Karg snarled as the still-snickering Grosk caught up with him. "And now I believe it!"

O.O.O

Watch duty had been doubled the rest of the night. Instead of falling back on the system established in their first tour of the Realm, of dividing the night into three equal shifts and rotating through the six of them over the course of two nights, at least two people were awake at all times, on the lookout for the briefly spotted rider and his (or her) assumed companions to return. The only person exempt from this schedule was Terri, who was allowed to sleep uninterrupted in the hope of a dream to show them what to do next.

While wise and prudent, the extra watch precautions turned out to be unnecessary. Nothing the least bit threatening or unusual happened during that entire night, discounting, of course, the incident during the second shift, when a large bat swooped a little too close to Eric's face while in pursuit of the insects that fluttered around the light of the campfire. Fortunately he had the good sense not to scream, and Rob had been looking the other way when it happened, so as far as the Cavalier knew, no one had the privilege of witnessing his graceless, backwards tumble off the boulder he'd been sitting on.

"Wake up, guys!" Diana called as the suns came up on her and Presto's shift. "Come on, it's morning already. Presto's fixing something to eat."

As she gently nudged at the sleeping form of Eric with her Staff, she heard another voice across the camp announce quietly, "I'm awake."

"Well, that makes three of us, Hank," she answered, getting a little less gentle with her Staff every second. "Look at this! He hasn't gotten the least bit easier to wake up, has he?" She almost laughed as Eric vaguely batted the air in her direction before pulling the blanket over his head and mumbling something incoherent.

As Diana shrugged and moved on to wake Rob and Terri with a little more kindness than she'd shown Eric, Hank gently stroked his sleeping wife's hair as she snuggled against his chest, reluctant for the moment to wake her up into the cruel reality of the day. Then, with a sigh, he steeled his resolve and softly called her name until at last she began to blink her way towards wakefulness.

With a stretch and a drowsy yawn, Sheila rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and gave him a warm smile, a smile which faded just seconds after reaching her face. Suddenly her eyes snapped wide open; she sat bolt upright and looked around frantically. Her expression raced from frightened confusion, as if she had no idea where she was, to stubborn refusal to accept what she saw. A moment later, she was struggling to bite back tears when Hank quietly sat up beside her and pulled her into a comforting embrace.

"It ... wasn't just a bad dream, was it?" she sighed brokenly.

"I'm afraid not," Hank admitted, clearly wishing he could assure her it was otherwise.

Swallowing hard, Sheila whispered, almost to herself, "Oh, God, my little baby ..." It had all happened too fast yesterday. Her mind scarcely believed it could be true this morning, and yet, that one quick look around reinforced the awful truth: they were here in the Realm, with Caitlin the hostage of their arch-enemy. She would have given anything if only she'd found herself in her own bed this morning, warm and safe and happy with her husband sleeping peacefully next to her, being woken by the sound of their little daughter pounding on the bedroom door wanting to know for probably the hundredth time if it was okay to have peanut butter and marshmallows for breakfast. But instead, she'd found himself sleeping under an open sky that held the promise of multiple suns in that strange but familiar dawn, surrounded by an impossibly-colored landscape that seemed to have taken broad liberties with the laws of Nature.

"Aw, _come on_, Hat!" Presto's petulant voice interrupted Sheila's downward slide into depression and caught the attention of everyone who was even the slightest bit awake this morning. He spoke with no small amount of frustration directly into the Hat, as if there were little gremlins at the bottom who were responsible for filling his orders. Or, in this case, not filling his orders correctly. "Milk! That's all I want! You were nice enough to give me the Raisin Bran, but we just _can't _eat cereal without milk! Real milk! Like from a cow. Not this ..." Presto paused to grimace at a blue bottle before tossing it aside, " Milk of Magnesia!"

"Well, you know what I always said." The voice was Rob's. He'd just managed to get himself up, stretching his shoulder muscles which were staging a protest after being forced to sleep on the ground for the first time in years. "Your Hat's a late sleeper. It just doesn't like being woke up this early in the morning and it's gonna let you know it!"

With something almost resembling a pout, Presto muttered, "Well, I'll let it go back to sleep if it just finishes serving breakfast."

"Breakfast? Did someone say the magic word?" Where Diana's poking and prodding had failed, this one simple word had succeeded in rousing the Cavalier, who was an even later sleeper than Presto's Hat. Scrambling up, he left his blanket in a heap and surveyed the fare that the Magician had provided so far. "Raisin Bran," he finally said with an odd mixture of emotion in his voice. It was like he was rather disappointed to see that it wasn't steak and eggs on rye toast with half a grapefruit and coffee, but at the same time was _really_ glad it wasn't one of those scaly-feathery-stinky things that they'd so often subsisted on in their previous tour of the Realm.

"Yeah, and so far nothing but," Presto answered, speaking with more than a little annoyance directly at his Hat as the others gathered around for their morning meal. The last one to join them was Terri, who appeared deep in thought about something. But since she did not immediately speak, the others assumed that she did not have the memory of a fresh, prophetic dream burning in her mind.

"Okay, I'm gonna try this again," Presto finally announced, waving his fingers over the opening of his Hat once more as his mind raced for a rhyme. "Uh, let's see. How about, um, _Alakazarm! Hat, hear this charm! Give us something fresh from the dairy farm!_"

A chorus of groans at the bad rhyme scheme echoed around the morning campfire.

"You have _got_ to brush up on your Shakespeare," Eric informed him helpfully.

Presto grinned gamely, then glanced into his Hat in horror. Quickly, he slammed it shut before the smell became noticeable, or, worse, before the contents could escape. "Eeew! Hat, I meant _dairy products_!"

Some vague laughter as well as horrified shrieks were intermingled with the mad scramble to escape by those sitting closest to Presto, whose face was rapidly flushing through the entire range of the red spectrum.

"Don't worry about it," Hank told him, when everyone had relocated themselves further away from the embarrassed young Wizard. Little could lighten the Ranger's mood this morning; he had had barely even cracked a ghost of a smile during this entire incident. "We can just pretend it's trail mix and eat it dry. I'd rather get moving as soon as possible."

Not even Eric grumbled at this suggestion. No one wanted to leave Caitlin at Venger's dubious mercy for even a minute longer than necessary. So with as much haste as possible, they munched dry handfuls of cereal along with the few berries they had found in the underbrush around their campsite, and washed it all down with cold water from the spring that was found a few dozen yards into the stand of trees around them.

As they sat and ate, all eyes at some point drifted in Terri's direction. They'd been counting on her, hoping her prophetic powers would show them the way out of this seemingly impossible situation. And yet they were hesitant to ask. Since she hadn't volunteered anything when she woke this morning, they could only assume, in great disappointment, that no visions had come to her in the night. Or worse, maybe she _had_ seen the future. And maybe her silence was an attempt to spare them from a very ugly truth. Either way, no one had the nerve to ask her anything.

"Look, guys," Terri sighed when the silent, questioning stares got to be too much. "I did have some sort of dream last night, I'm sure of that. I just ... don't remember it right now." Shrugging helplessly, she picked a few raisins out of her cereal to eat first, avoiding eye contact and the let-down expressions on her friends' faces. "You know how that goes. Sometimes it doesn't come to me until something triggers it." She attempted a confident smile. "It'll hit me when it's supposed to, you all know how it is."

"Sure, Terr," Rob smiled back, unaware of the raisins stuck in his teeth, while placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He certainly would never blame Terri for their predicament, but an unbidden thought came to his mind anyway. If only Terri's dream had come back to her _when it was supposed to_, yesterday in the amusement park, they might have known it was Venger taking Caitlin on the ride in the first place. Had she remembered just five minutes earlier, they would have had a good chance of stopping him before any of this could have happened!

Rob immediately wanted to kick himself for thinking that. It wasn't Terri's fault! She'd tried to help, tried to do everything she could. Who knew how long they might have been standing there, wasting precious time wondering what had just happened and why Hank had run off the way he did, without her dream to tell them they had all been tricked by Venger?

"Okay, guys, let's break camp," Hank instructed when they had all finished their cold and cheerless breakfast. The fire was doused and covered with dirt, the blankets rolled up and stuffed into Presto's Hat, which seemed happy enough to take them back. After briskly washing up in the little spring, the group was ready to travel.

Sheila held up the Gem of Shahvin to the early morning suns-light, showing that Presto's observation the night before was correct. As they watched, the swirling smoke within the gemstone seemed drawn towards something as it surged slowly against the jewel's facets. If it could have broken through, it would be flying towards something far off on the northeast horizon. No roads or trails led in that direction. Ahead of them was a vast stretch of flat land, in which the protection of the trees grew more sparse in the distance. Miles off, they thought they could see what might have been a deeply banked river cutting a winding path through the landscape.

"That way," was all Sheila said, pointing in that direction before tucking the Gem back into her belt pouch.

Several nods, a few mumbled words of agreement. Eric didn't even try to come up with his usual complaints about the unprotected appearance of the landscape or the daunting distance they would have to cover as they began to walk. Nothing was important now but getting Caitlin back.

Behind them, unnoticed, a pair of ghostly white eyes glowed beneath the shadowy canopy of the trees they had camped beneath, watching them carefully as they set out to follow the Gem's smoky 'compass.' They were too far away to hear the whispery voice laughing softly to itself.

**O.O.O**

A thin black wisp of nothingness drifted silently through the bowels of the fortress, seeping easily through keyholes and between the faintest cracks in the stone walls, hurrying only when it passed through those hateful flickers of light from a torch, or even worse, may the Dark One forbid, a painful stab of suns-light through one of the open, unglazed windows.

Up in the top of the highest tower was perched a sort of astronomy/astrology lab, wherein Shadow Demon found Venger alternately studying a star map, a mechanical model of their quadrisolar system, and what appeared to be a hand-drawn and much abused map of a great expanse of wasteland dotted by tiny landmarks with names in a language that Shadow Demon had never bothered to learn. Venger had been here since late last night to study the stars, and was so engrossed in his work that he had not noticed the rising of the suns.

"Well?" Venger demanded without looking up, though Shadow Demon could have sworn he'd not made a sound as he'd wafted up, like incense from a censer, through a tiny knothole in the floorboard.

In his most servile tone, Shadow Demon announced, "Master, it is about the, er …Young Ones." He faltered almost audibly at the title, but kept his composure in front of his Master and hoped for the best.

"How fortunate that they shall be the focus of your report," Venger said neutrally, and then he turned away from his map to face his suddenly quailing servant. "Since it was them whom I sent you to spy upon in the first place."

At this, Shadow Demon relaxed, and would have smiled if he had the lips for it. Venger seemed to be in a particularly good mood today! Having the child as a hostage had apparently convinced him that his plan would be successful. True, usually such a tactic had ensured his victory in the past, though Shadow Demon remembered all too well how horribly it went awry the last time Venger had tried that particular ploy against the Young Ones. Fortunately for Shadow Demon, he had enough sense to hold his nonexistent tongue when it came to reminding Venger of this fact.

And Shadow Demon felt he just _had_ to find a better title than 'Young Ones.' They really weren't all that young by human standards any more, and he felt kind of silly calling them that. _Medium-Aged Ones, perhaps? Young Adult Ones? _

"Of course, Master," the servant answered as if none of these thoughts had crossed his mind. "The, er …" _Highly Irritating Ones?_ "The human meddlers are already on the move this morning. Clearly they have a specific destination in mind." No, _human meddlers _just didn't have the right ring to it.

Venger scowled. Or perhaps he smiled. Frankly, Shadow Demon had never managed to tell the difference. "Dungeon Master has given them directions?"

"No, Master," Shadow Demon explained, knowing exactly what he had seen. "The Gem itself directs them. They simply follow what it shows them."

"Intriguing," Venger mused. Such a thing had not been know about the Gem of Shahvin, and yet it was so clear now. It was part of the Veil of the Dead, so of course one part of that greater whole would be influenced by the Veil's nearness. That unidentifiable, smiling scowl crossed Venger's features again. His original plan, as detailed to Shadow Demon, was that nemeses would find the location of the Veil for him, a location so shrouded in the mists of legend that even he did not know where to begin searching. But now that he knew the Gem itself was their guide, Shadow Demon felt their unwitting services were no longer necessary. Venger could simply take the Stone from them at any time.

Then again, Shadow Demon knew he'd have to do much of the dirty work, and preferred not to go to such effort when those pitiful fools were so conveniently showing the way. Why not let them face the travails of following the lead of the Gem through that dangerous, unforgiving wasteland? They would do it without hesitation, of that there was no doubt. They all valued that child too much.

Venger seemed to be of the same mind. With someone else determined to forge the way to the Veil, he no longer had need to study the maps and charts that had so fascinated him just moments ago. Carefully rolling the aged parchment before replacing the documents in the case filled with hundreds of similar maps, he commented to his servant, "This is most excellent news. For now, keep watch on them, Shadow Demon. Notify me at once the moment they locate the Veil. And if harm should befall them along the way ..."

Shadow Demon cringed, expecting the order to ensure, by any means possible, that no danger was to threaten the companions as they traveled. So he was rather surprised when Venger shrugged carelessly and finished, " ... then you are to seize the Gem at once, and I will simply use it to find the Veil for myself."

**O.O.O**

"They're coming."

Those two words, spoken by Terri, stopped the travelers in their tracks. The Dreamer didn't notice the alarmed stares they were giving her as she stood stock still, staring off at something that no one else could see.

"They're coming," she repeated. "But I don't think they'll be here for at least an hour."

"They _who_?" Rob asked her when she fell silent, while the others looked quickly at the horizon in all directions. It was still somewhat before noon, but as the miles trudged wearily by, the land had grown steadily more arid, until their feet were treading across sand which resembled the fringes of a desert. They had a ray of hope that these were the Sands of Muswaf that Dungeon Master had mentioned, but a sense of foreboding descended on them as they realized there were absolutely no trees, no ravines, and no obvious sources of water on the way to their destination. The river that they had seen had wandered across their path two miles ago, but then meandered in a different direction than the stone had indicated, so they could not trek along the safety of its high banks. They were sitting ducks out here.

"That rider you guys saw last night," Terri replied, frowning as she tried to concentrate on the images in the dream that was just now coming back to her. She didn't have a more specific answer other than to say, "He's bringing friends. Lots of them. They're all armed … swords and stuff, and they're riding hard." Rubbing her forehead as she sifted through the layers of the dream, she eventually grasped the reason these riders were pushing their horses so fast. "The Gem. They know it's here." Finally, slowly coming back to her senses, she swept her eyes around the wide-open distances, until she locked onto something beyond normal sight, coming from the southeast. "That way," she said, pointing. "That's where they're coming from."

"Terrific," Eric muttered. "Presto, can you conjure up, like, an underground bomb shelter or something? Maybe if we can disguise the entrance, they won't see it and they'll pass right by us."

"Won't work," Presto shook his head. "Sounds like they know we're here, so that means they're gonna keep looking until they find us. We don't have the time to, you know, just hide until they give up, 'cause they probably won't."

"Then we deal with them when they get here," Hank said, looking hard into the shimmering suns-light reflecting off the dunes before them. With little hope that he added, "It's a long shot, because I don't see anything out there, but if Terri's right that we have an hour, maybe we'll find somewhere safe by then." Never being one to pin all their chances on a hoped-for twist of fate, he considered a moment longer, then suggested a more practical approach to the problem. "Sheila, when we know they're getting near, I want you to disappear, but stick close by at first until we can figure out what they want. If and when these riders get here, if things turn ugly, then I want you to take off before they have a chance to figure out where the Gem might be. Run, just keep going, and don't wait for us. If we can, we'll try to catch up with you later."

It was the best plan anyone could think up on such short notice with so little to work with, but it was not without its flaws. The sand would show any footprints Sheila made if she had to flee the scene, and if the Gem's presence had been detected by magical means, then their pursuers could follow whether it was invisible or not. Even if Sheila did escape the riders, what was she supposed to do if the others were unable to join up with her afterward? If it came to her having to escape alone, was anyone certain she could even survive the desert by herself, let alone find and rescue her daughter unaided?

The questions had no answers. Without anything better immediately coming to mind, the group quickly struck out again in the direction they had been following all day. The hour Terri had promised them could get them only a couple more miles in this heat. While knowing they could never outdistance galloping horses, at least they could make it a little while longer before the riders overtook them.

**O.O.O**

When half their allotted hour had passed, there was still no sign of the approaching riders, but a different surprise greeted their eyes as they struggled their way to the top of a dune. Hidden from sight until just now by the bulk of the hill of shifting sand was what appeared to be a simple oasis, surrounded by about a dozen or so palm-like trees, perhaps half a mile away.

With the exception of Terri, everyone stopped in their tracks and stared at the distant pool warily. Terri, on the other hand, was already stepping-and-sliding her way down the face of the dune. She was about halfway to the bottom when it occurred to her that she had proceeded on her own. Skidding to a sandy halt, she looked back up with mild surprise at the others. "What's wrong with you guys?" she called out. "Did I miss something?"

"Don't you remember what happened last time we ran into an oasis?" Eric called back down at her from underneath his Shield, which he had been holding over his head as a makeshift sunshade since embarking on their hot and sweaty trek across this desert.

"Um, well, all things considered, no," Terri responded with a slight hint of sarcasm. "Remember, I was only in the Realm a couple days!"

"Uh, yeah," Eric agreed, firmly refusing to blush. Over these past years, Terri had become such an integral member of their group that sometimes, it was hard to remember that she hadn't been in the Realm every step of the way with them. "Of course I know that! I just thought that ... um ...you would have remembered one of us telling you that story."

Terri had to admit that she sort of recalled being told something about an oasis, but it seemed like a minor part in a more important story. Crossing her arms, she waited for the others to make up their minds to follow her down the dune. "Enlighten me," she prompted.

"There were these big ugly monsters there, hiding in the ruins around the fountain," Rob explained, sliding on his feet as if he were skiing down the dune. He looked like he might actually enjoy this method of descent, in another time when circumstances weren't quite so dire. "Turns out they were travelers who spent the night there and fell under some sort of curse and were changed into those things. We ended up needing Rahmoud's help to fight them off. Up to that point, we'd been thinking about staying the night there ourselves, which meant we would've got hit with the same curse if those thingies hadn't tried to eat us first."

Terri eyed the lush haven skeptically. It wasn't that she disbelieved Rob, in fact, it was quite the opposite. Just from her short stay in the Realm, she knew that what seemed impossible on Earth happened on a regular basis around this place. She was just trying to look at the situation rationally. "Well," she said, taking another step and letting the small avalanche of sand carry her downward a couple yards, "I don't see any ruins. I don't see any fountain. Just a pool, some trees and some, I don't know, ferns and flowers or something. So I don't think this is the same oasis."

"Truuuuue!" Presto agreed, unfortunately losing his footing at that very moment and sliding uncontrollably past her and Rob, arms windmilling wildly until he came to an undignified halt at the bottom of the dune. Standing after a moment of wallowing in his wounded dignity, he brushed the sand from his robes while muttering something that his friends knew better than to ask him to repeat.

"Which may mean this is our lucky day," Eric nodded as he wiped the sweat out of his eyes. "Remember what Rahmoud told us about oasises ... um, oasisissies ... er ..." He ended with an uncertain falter in his voice.

"Oas-ES," Presto corrected automatically as he finished shaking the sand from his shoes.

"I remember," Diana continued smoothly, lightly springing down the face of the dune with no apparent difficulty. "An oasis is neutral territory. By law, and by common courtesy to other travelers, they're a safe haven where you can rest and get water and be perfectly safe even if your worst enemy is there. So theoretically, if we get to the oasis before the riders get to us, they should leave us alone."

"_If_ they show common courtesy," Hank added grimly as he, Sheila and Eric made it to the bottom of the dune. "And _if_ they respect the law."

"Of course, even if they do," Presto countered, "we can't stay there forever and they'll know it. All they have to do is wait for us to step away, and all bets are off."

**O.O.O**

"Quickly!" one of the riders shouted to his companions over the pounding, relentless din of scores of swift hooves thundering across the desert sands. "They are less than a league away!"

Heeding the will of their masters, the sweating horses pushed onward across the desert beneath the unrelenting gaze of the four bright suns.

**O.O.O**

Another ten minutes had brought the Earth-born adventurers to within about fifty yards of the promise of cool water and shady trees. But at almost the same moment, two separate sights alarmed them.

Behind them, over the crest of the dune they had climbed, a cloud of sand and dust kicked visibly into the air. Only a few seconds of tracking its direction revealed that it was fast approaching. The dust could have easily been stirred up by the pounding hooves of dozens of horses galloping their way. The riders, it seemed, were nearly upon them.

At the same time, their resolve was badly shaken when they got a closer look at what from a distance they thought were common, sun-whitened rocks occasionally dotting the sandy ground along the way to the oasis.

They were skeletons.

Upon cursory inspection, the bones bore no clear marks of heavy blows or other severe injury before death. For whatever reason, these people seemed to have just fallen in their tracks and died.

"Are we looking at another trap, or did they just die of thirst before they could reach the water?" Sheila wondered. It was one of the few things she'd said since morning beyond giving directions based on what the Gem showed her. Otherwise, for most of the day she'd maintained a weary silence that reflected the mood of the entire group.

"We've got bigger things to worry about!" The Acrobat pointed. While still not yet in their line of sight, the cloud of dust told her that the riders were fast approaching the top of the dune. The thunder of dozens of hoofbeats could clearly be heard on the dry, hot breeze.

"Sheila, go!" Hank said. "We'll make a stand at the oasis. If things start going bad for us, run and don't look back. Got it?"

Hank didn't have to tell her twice. Sparing just a moment to give her husband a quick kiss goodbye, just in case, she secured the Gem in its pouch, pulled the hood of her Cloak up over her head, and vanished from sight.

"Safest bet we've got," Eric said, almost sounding like he was trying to convince himself of this as he watched the slight scuffs of sand indicate that Sheila had run about twenty yards to their left. "Besides," he added with a glance at the parched skeletons, "whatever happened to these guys was a long time ago. If someone did attack them, they're long gone."

That statement served only as a forcible reminder of something Eric and the others had learned long ago: Never tempt fate. The moment he uttered the words and took just one more step, the sands around his feet shifted and whirled violently. His surprised yelp caused the others to draw their Weapons as the rush of blowing sand swirled and divided, coalescing itself into three distinct dust devils in a semicircle between them and the oasis ... dust devils each holding within them the ghostly shape of a man.

"Not now!" Hank shouted in frustration.

At the same time, Presto shouted, "Eric! Get away from them!"

The warning came too late. The swirling winds settled, and in their places stood three man-like beings of pure sand. Eric had no time to react. With no hesitation whatsoever, the one closest to him merely reached out and touched the Cavalier's arm with its sandy fingers.

Immediately, Eric toppled backwards to the ground.

"Let them have it!" Hank shouted, letting his fury at this delay fly in a volley of flaming arrows. The riders were practically breathing down their necks, now these things had them drawn to a halt; Eric was already down and all this would make it that much more impossible for them to reach Caitlin in time. But not if he had anything to say about it.

His arrows struck one of the sand creatures squarely, and its torso erupted in a shower of grit. Even before this victory could register, though, the creature was reforming in the swirling winds that stirred up the sands around it. Almost as if it were clay being sculpted by an invisible artist's hand, the thing remade itself right before their eyes, striding slowly towards them as if it had never taken a blow. As it moved, a glint of something like crystals imbedded in the sand of its body shone around where the arrows had struck.

Diana took the more direct approach with the sand creature closest to her. With one of her familiar battle-cries, she extended her Staff and struck the thing's head. Her aim was true even if her movements were suddenly, inexplicably sluggish, but to her surprise, the Staff only passed uselessly through the sand-thing's head. The path it cut simply closed right behind as if she'd swished the end of her Weapon through a bowl of water.

Strange as this was, Diana couldn't find the energy to think about it. Suddenly she was very drowsy, and it took all her strength to move her leaden legs and stumble backwards.

Safely out of range of the thing, the Acrobat shook her head and blinked her gummy eyes, utterly exhausted. She felt so suddenly fatigued that she could have just fallen asleep right there, despite the energizing adrenaline rush as she fought the sand creature.

Fortunately, one glimpse of Eric's prone form in her peripheral vision was enough to make her comprehend what had just happened.

"Rob!" she shouted as the Barbarian charged past her at one of the things with his Club raised. "Those things! Stay back! If you get too close, those things can put you to sleep!"

Skidding to an abrupt halt, Rob digested this information and instantly changed his plan of attack. Instead of striking one of the sand creatures directly, he instead brought his Club down with all his strength on the ground before him. The shockwave from this blow caused a sandy tsunami to rush outward, throwing the creatures from their feet. Their bodies were flung high into the air, crashing back down into heaps of loose sand.

"Got 'em!" Rob gloated, just a little prematurely.

"No you didn't!" Diana shouted, pointing as the whirlwinds kicked up again. "We knock them down, they just reform!

As soon as the creatures took shape again, Hank concentrated his aim on one of the monsters and let more arrows fly. It had occurred to him what those crystals in the first creature's sand body were that he saw after he'd blasted it: Glass. Glass was little more than super-heated sand that had melted and cooled, so if his arrows could get the creature hot enough, maybe he could petrify it into a crystalized column. But even though he could see it was working, the process was slow, and there were two more of the things to contend with.

Diana and Rob had backed off, realizing their mode of attack was useless. Strikes with their Weapons only hindered the creatures for a brief moment, and getting close to the things would prove to be their undoing, as unwittingly demonstrated by Eric. Diana spared half a moment to hope that Sheila had the sense to stay back; if she'd been charmed to sleep while invisible and fell down somewhere in the sand, they'd never find her unless they had the blind luck of stumbling over her.

"Dammit, now what do we do?" Rob asked hurriedly, looking over his shoulder. His stomach sank at the sight behind him. The riders pursuing them, heretofore unseen except by Terri in her dream, had crested the dune and were practically pouring down the side. He guessed there were at least thirty, and assumed there were more who hadn't climbed to the top yet.

"Blow them apart!" Terri spoke up suddenly, oblivious to the horsemen. "You've got to blow them to pieces!"

"With what?" Presto demanded. All this time he'd been searching his Hat for something useful, but he and the others began to fall back as two of the sand things advanced on them. "A fan? Dynamite? What?"

"We've tried knocking them to pieces!" Rob almost shouted at Terri. "It didn't work! They just reformed! Didn't you see it?"

Suddenly Rob was aware that maybe she _hadn't_ seen it. She stood with her eyes closed and a deep frown of intense concentration on her face, which meant that she didn't see how perilously close to danger she was, either. Grabbing her shoulders, Rob pulled her farther away from the creatures as Presto valiantly attacked with two cans of compressed air.

"No, no! With magic!" she explained, still concentrating on this part of the dream as it unfolded. "Some sort of magic is holding them together, so you've got to disrupt that! Somebody's going to ... somebody's got to blow them apart that way Oh, my God, the riders are here!"

Everything happened too fast for Rob to catch more than fleeting images. A sand creature lunged past Presto towards them, and he grabbed Terri and threw her to the ground to escape its touch. The hoofbeats of the horses thundered in his ears, but at the same time a high-pitched whine threatened to split his head in two. Somewhere in the middle of this he thought he heard wild, challenging shouts, and above that, the sound of Hank's Bow continuing to fire. A second later, a muffled explosion, and then another, showered everything with the harsh grit of flying sand.

As soon as the shower was mostly over, Rob dared to open his eyes and look around. He couldn't see the sand creatures any more, except for the one that Hank had melted into a glassy jag. His stomach jolted hard when he realized the galloping hooves were only yards away.

The blasts had knocked Diana down too, but Rob could see she was scrambling to her feet in the face of this new threat. Hank now ignored the thing he had melted, instead whirling to turn his drawn Bow on their pursuers. Rob had a vague impression that Presto was on his feet behind him as he leapt upright, readying his Club to bring down on the first horseman that got near.

Shouts of victory from the horsemen could be heard above the swiftly pounding rhythm of their approach.

With nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, Rob and the others stood their ground in the face of their pursuers, Weapons charged and ready to fight. Suddenly, a shout from one of the riders rose above the rest.

"Hold your Weapons!"

Shocked by this cry, they could only stand gaping at the shouter, obeying his command out of sheer surprise. The exception was Rob, who was far too astonished to hold his Weapon as instructed. He actually dropped it.

The rider who had called out, a man shrouded in an elegant, though now road-dusty, robe, reined his horse and nimbly leapt off the steed before it had come to a complete halt. Throwing back the scarf that protected his bearded face, he regarded the companions with considerably less surprise than they were regarding him with as he sheathed his great Scimitar.

"I see what Nhuzar says is true. You have indeed returned, my children!"

"RAHMOUD!" The rush was so great to be the first to hug their adopted father that several of them stumbled over one another, much to the delight of the laughing King of the Desert. Within seconds, even Sheila had run back to them, tossed off her hood to reappear in their midst, and thrown her arms around Rahmoud's neck.

Amidst the commotion of this unexpected reunion, Terri alone was a picture of silent confusion, the only one not clamoring for a hug from the man. "This ... this is that Rahmoud person you guys always talked about?" she asked in surprise and no small amount of confusion.

"Yeah! This is Rahmoud, all right!" Rob laughed. "He's the greatest! Oh! I get it! You wouldn't have known it was him from your dream, 'cause you never met him, did you?"

"Is all this sunlight baking your brain?" the Dreamer replied defensively. "How in the world do you keep forgetting I was only in the Realm for a couple days?" Truthfully, she felt a little bad about it. Had she known that the riders in her dream were loyal to the man that her friends had loved as a surrogate father, she could have told them so. Her dream had not been a warning so much as a message that help was on the way. But how was she supposed to have known this was Rahmoud? The description 'tall, graying beard, dark skin,' could have fit a lot of people.

But no one seemed upset that she hadn't known the riders beneath their scarves, and they cheerfully introduced her to Rahmoud, who bowed and kissed her hand formally.

"It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Terri Buchanan, beloved of my son Bobby- whoops! I mean Rrrrob!" Rahmoud said formally, rolling the name dramatically just as the Barbarian made a face.

"Rahmoud, look, I'm just as glad to see you as everyone else, but we've got a crisis here. Can you tell us what those things were?" Hank asked then, indicating what little was left of their three attackers. The glass pillar still stood, but the two piles of sand that indicated where the other two fell had now been trampled by the horses as their riders led them to the water of the oasis.

"Sandmen, my children," Rahmoud explained. "Fell creatures whose mere presence can put one into the deepest of slumbers. As shown by Master Eric!" He laughed, indicating the Cavalier's sleeping form. Two of the King's men were standing over Eric and calling to him, nudging him in hopes of rousing him. "Do not fear. He will wake soon enough. What business such creatures have in protecting this place, it is not known to me. Perhaps some cruel wizard once took delight in denying road-weary and thirsty travelers the sweet waters of this tiny oasis. A Sandman will do no more to one than put one to sleep, and, in the presence of the Sandman, in sleep he will remain. The creature itself will do no more harm than that. But it is a dangerous thing, my children, to sleep here beneath the blazing light of the suns. The remains of these poor travelers attest to that." Here he nodded at the brittle skeletons they had seen earlier. "But such beasts are easy enough to deal with," he smiled, patting the enchanted Scimitar which had caused the disruptive soundwaves that destroyed the two remaining Sandmen.

"YYYYYAAAAAHHHH!" The sudden shout rent the desert air, and the two men tending to Eric burst into laughter. The Cavalier had woken to the unexpected sight of two unfamiliar, fierce- looking faces hovering over his, and his surprise was now well known.

"Master Eric!" Rahmoud called, "you have a most unfortunate skill for picking the wrong oasis!"

"Oh, man, Rahmoud!" Eric cried happily, his expression shifting from terror to utter delight at the sound of the warm, familiar voice. Accepting a hand up from one of the men assisting him, he added in relief, "If there's anyone I wanted to see right now, it's you!" Shaking of the sleepiness the Sandman had caused in him, he ran to the man who was more of a father to him than his own had ever been, nearly bowling the King over with an excited and heartfelt hug.

"Indeed, my children," Rahmoud continued when Eric had released him from the embrace. Flinging one arm around Diana's shoulders and the other around Presto's, he added a little more seriously, "It is a delight that these old eyes behold you once again, and yet how I wish it was under other circumstances that we should meet. In days recently passed, the Sages of my Court did tell me that the stars, and the scrying waters, and the smoke of many censers, and countless other omens have shown them that the Gem of Shahvin would indeed return to this world. I could only imagine that it would return in your hands. Therefore I have had my men ranging the lands far and wide in search of you. When Nhuzar brought me news this morning that he had discovered your whereabouts, my sons and daughters, I set out immediately with two score of my most loyal fighters to reach you and protect both you and the Gem before anything else could find you first." As he spoke, he gestured with a flourish to a man in dark, flowing clothing, leading a dun-colored horse by the bridle. This, presumably, was the same rider who had been spotted from their campsite the night before. "It is a most dangerous time for such a thing to have returned to this world, my children."

The King of the East suddenly laughed then, that hearty, echoing belly-laugh that had cheered the former Young Ones on many occasions during their two-year stay with their adopted father. "But listen to me!" he exclaimed, hugging Presto and Diana closer. "It would sound as though I am not happy to see you, my children! Little can be further from the truth! My heart is gladdened to see your faces once more! But ..." Here he paused, looking around in surprised realization. "But I do not see my precious little Cait-a-lin! How can it be that you have come back to me without my dear grandchild?"

No one replied right away. In that moment of uncomfortable silence, helpless glances were exchanged, each wordlessly begging the others to be the bearer of such bad news.

Their uneasy hush was more than enough for Rahmoud. It told him all he needed to know: Something bad had happened to Caitlin. All the mirth drained from the laugh lines on his face, and the sparkle in his eyes flamed into a dangerous fire. "What has happened to my Cait-a-lin?" he said in a low voice, one that threatened swift and severe reprisals if he found that anyone had harmed the child he claimed as his granddaughter.

"It's ... it's Venger," Sheila finally volunteered hesitantly, and she had to bite back a quaver in her voice as she spoke. "We don't know how, but he somehow he got through to our world, and he grabbed Caitlin and he brought her here ..."

"Hank jumped him, but it wasn't enough to stop the bastard," Eric continued when Sheila broke off to sniffle softly. Rahmoud's face grew fiercer by the moment as the Cavalier explained, "Venger disguised himself as Hank and pretty much fooled us all. Caitlin went off with him 'cause nobody thought anything was wrong. He got away, got back through a portal, and the rest of us couldn't do much else but follow. That's why we're here now. We know he wants the Gem. He's threatened us with some pretty horrible things that he's going to do to Caitlin if he doesn't get it."

"And yet again, a beloved child is stolen from us!" Rahmoud growled. "But this time, it is by no demon of nightmares, but by the Dark Lord himself! Pah! His stature matters not, for I swear to you now that he will pay dearly, should even the slightest harm befall the grandchild of Rahmoud, King of Khadish!" At that moment, no one could doubt Rahmoud's raw fury or question his power and his resolve. The greatest Force of Evil in all the Realm did not frighten this man.

"We have a pretty good idea where he is," Sheila told him, desperately grasping at the glimmer of hope that Rahmoud now offered. "The Gem is showing us the way."

"Then we have no time to waste, my children," Rahmoud practically roared. Turning to his people, he quickly conversed with them in Khadisian, a language that the Earth-born guests had somewhat learned in their stay in the great Eastern City, though they had forgotten most of it upon returning home. Rahmoud seemed to realize this, and as seven of his men handed the reins of their sleek horses to him, he explained, "We must ride quickly, and for that, the fewer we have amongst us, the less there will be to slow us down. Thirty of my men I have commanded back to Khadish. The remaining ten shall ride with us. And these fine steeds," he finished, indicating the seven that had been handed him, "swift and light, fleet-footed as the breeze, shall be yours, my children."

Without word or hesitation, the pared-down group swung themselves into their saddles. Even Terri, who had only ridden a horse a few times in her life, settled herself on the steed's back with grim determination. Finally, Sheila spoke the two words they needed to know as she drew the Gem of Shahvin from the pouch at her waist and watched it for a moment. Gesturing off into the distance that was in no visible way remarkable from the desert on all other sides, she said only, "That way."

"Then, my children," Rahmoud shouted, spurring his horse in the direction that Sheila indicated, "we ride!"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

_Author's Note: I make a couple references to my fanfiction "Dastirum" in this chapter. Rest assured that you don't have to read that story to understand what's going on here. However, if you are confused by some off-hand yet oddly specific references to something you swear never happened in the show, it's probably just something that took place in my story instead._

O.O.O

"Ssshadow Demon! Pleassse!"

Shadow Demon looked around in mild surprise when he heard his title hissed thus. His ghostly eyes fell upon a lizard man, dressed in the uniform of the Fortress Guard, hurrying towards him with an air of desperation.

"I beg of you! And I beg of my mossst generousss Massster, Lord Venger!" the lizard man pleaded, falling to his knees in supplication. "Sssend me to the front linesss of the sssiege on Ballamour Hill!"

This left Shadow Demon taken completely aback. He was quite used to the rank and file of soldiers coming to him begging for favors in the name of Venger the Generous Master, or Venger the Munificent Lord of the Dark Army, or whatever other flowery title the soldiers could invent in an attempt to wheedle what they wanted out of him. But this bizarre request was something entirely new.

"The ... the siege on Ballamour Hill?" Shadow Demon repeated uncertainly, wondering if he could have possibly heard correctly. Ballamour Hill held a great, heavily defended citadel that guarded one of the passes leading through the Dragonsback Mountains. But since there was more than one pass through this rugged terrain, it made the siege one of Venger's more pointless campaigns. It was also one of the most costly, since the citadel was hewn so high into the hillside that any advancing army was easily cut down long before the slope had been even halfway scaled. Their siege had lasted ten months so far, and Venger had lost nearly double the forces he had originally sent out to take the stronghold. Rumors abounded that those within the citadel were supplied daily by their friends beyond the mountains who had managed to tame hundreds of giant rocs capable of carrying them food and fresh weapons. Shadow Demon's personal theory was that the entire population had flown themselves and everything of value out on the backs of the rocs in the middle of the night, and the soldiers that still defended the keep were posted there on a weekly rotation as a decoy to keep Venger throwing away his valuable resources over nothing.

Whether or not that was true, those who had been under siege for almost a year now still showed no sign of weakening. In fact, the guardians of Ballamour Hill were stronger than ever, and Shadow Demon had to deal with a sheaf of papers that represented the casualty list nearly every week. But to Shadow Demon's long-standing annoyance, Venger refused to abandon the siege simply because he would not, quote, "let those prideful humans have the chance to gloat at what they would perceive as my failure!" End quote. For this lizard man to beg to go there now was surely a death wish.

"Yesss! Pleassse!" the lizard man continued, answering Shadow Demon's unspoken question. "Ballamour Hill! Or the march on Turgusss Ssswamp! Anything! I beg you!"

Shadow Demon stared in stark, utter disbelief at the pleading lizard man. Had this soldier gone insane? With a bare ghost of a shrug, Shadow Demon gave up his attempt at grasping the guard's motivation. Finding his voice again, he demanded sharply, "Yours is one of the most sought-after positions in Venger's army! You stand guard here in the prestige and safety of your Master's own fortress! And yet you beg to be sent where death is almost assured!" He shook his shadowy head in open confusion. "Why?"

"Becaussse," the lizard man almost whimpered, "I cannot bear one more moment of lissstening to that child!"

Shadow Demon felt himself sinking. _That_ child, again?!

"Ssshe sssingsss a ssstrange sssong, over and over!" the lizard man continued, oblivious to the shadowy lackey's reaction to his reply. "The wordsss change ssslightly each time, but ssshe will not ssstop! I pound on the door and ssshout at her, but it only sssilencccesss her for a few momentsss! Then ssshe ssstartsss again! I can bear no more of thisss mental torture, Ssshadow Demon!"

Shadow Demon sighed as deeply as an incorporeal being could. They'd held this child captive for a little over one day. How had she already wreaked so much havoc while locked in a dungeon cell? Karg had come raging to him earlier, and Shadow Demon was still not sure whether he had been more upset because the child had stolen his keys or because Grosk had told everyone in the garrison about the incident. Later, an orc guard by the name of Ghurn had stormed up to him, furious and soaking wet, begging an indulgence from Venger's orders not to harm the child. He'd pulled open the child's cell door and jumped in, trying to scare her, and now desperately wanted to beat her for throwing her bucket of drinking water at him rather than screaming and cowering like a terrified child should. But Shadow Demon had upheld Venger's orders, and Ghurn was still stewing about this. Then, of course, there was what happened recently to Mhorag when he'd also made an attempt at frightening the child ... but a dislocated kneecap would heal once it had been reset. The girl packed a solid kick in her little frame, so they'd found, and was so feisty that even Venger himself had muttered something about having difficulty in making her behave.

Which parent did the child take after in this fighting spirit, the Ranger or the Thief? Or perhaps she took after her uncle, the Barbarian? Whichever it was, Shadow Demon placed a thousand curses on all their heads just for creating this tiny terror.

In the end, though, the important thing was ending this little brat's cellbound reign of terror before half the Guard mutinied. "Very well, then," Shadow Demon said as he drifted towards the dungeon, with the lizard man close behind. Was this what a headache felt like? He'd felt so much better just a few minutes ago, after reporting to Venger that the Young Ones – or whatever they should be called now - were moving more quickly towards their goal now that they were on horseback. And now, this ridiculousness. He sighed again. "I shall make the child be silent, if you cannot."

O.O.O

"… _An' on this farm, he had a turkey!_"

"Is this the song she continues to sing, soldier?"

"_E-I-E-I-O!_"

"Yesss, Ssshadow Demon! Ssshe namesss a different animal each time, but the sssong is the sssame!"

"_With a gobble gobble here!_"

"Does it mean anything?"

"_An' a gobble gobble there!_"

"Sssome nonsssenssse about a farmer!"

"_Here a gobble! There a gobble! Everywhere a gobble gobble!_"

"It sounds like nothing more than a simple children's song."

"_Ol' MacDonald had a farm!_"

"Sssimple, but very annoying!"

"_E-I-E-I-O!_"

Shadow Demon paused outside the cell door, listening to a few more verses. Briefly, he wondered if this was some sort of chant meant to summon one of the Great Old Ones and his bestial horde, though he dismissed that idea a moment later. A tiny brat such as this did not have the power to call forth one of the Ancient Ones, and though he'd have to consult the ancient tomes to be positive, Shadow Demon was fairly certain none of the Great Old Ones were named MacDonald.

More likely, then, it was some ridiculous child's song memorializing an old farmer who not only had a turkey on his strange farm, but also a goat, a mouse, and a tiger. Deciding this with a firm nod, Shadow Demon glanced down the hall. The guard had wandered off to join his comrade who shared the shift. Both of them had their hands over their ear holes.

Yes, Shadow Demon could see how this could easily get so annoying so quickly that even the guards could not handle it.

There was no point in trying to figure out what the girl was singing about. Determining his best approach to the situation, Shadow Demon seeped through a crack in the heavy, wooden door and entered the cell. Caitlin sat in a corner, bundled up in the threadbare and dirty blankets she had been given, putting all her heart into singing her strange song.

"Child! Be silent!" Shadow Demon ordered, interrupting a new verse about an elephant.

Immediately, Caitlin's mouth snapped shut, and she glanced around with a frantic look in her eyes. She'd heard the whispery voice in the room clearly, but the door had never opened to let anyone in. It was too dark in there for her simple human eyes to see her shadowy visitor.

"That's better," Shadow Demon said. "You will now remain silent, is that understood?"

Caitlin didn't answer right away, and she pulled the blankets up closer beneath her chin nervously while looking around the dark cell. But finally, in a small whisper, she asked, "Who said that?"

"I am Shadow Demon," he answered in his most menacing tone.

"Um … Sadow Dumdum?" Caitlin repeated uncertainly.

If a shadow could deflate, he would have. That infernal child had just managed to completely ruin any dramatic effect he'd hoped to have. "No!_ Sha - Dow De - Mon_!" he snarled, but enunciated more clearly.

"Shadow Deedum!" Caitlin repeated with more confidence.

"Argh! No! Shadow _Demon! DEMON_!" he hissed angrily. This was ridiculous! How was he supposed to intimidate this child if he came across to her sounding like some cutesy little imaginary creature from a child's bedtime story?

Just then, the keys belonging to the guards rattled in the door. Shadow Demon quickly gathered up his freshly flayed dignity before the girl finally glimpsed him in the torchlight as the cell was opened.

O.O.O

Caitlin's bright blue eyes widened when she realized that one of the shadows in her dark cell was looking back at her, and she quickly scrambled to her feet and edged away from the two lizard men that had just entered. Why didn't these monsters just leave her alone? She was running out of ways to try to chase the bad things away. She'd already discovered that they didn't melt when she threw water on them, though at least that one had stormed off and left her alone anyway. Her mommy and daddy had told her lots of times that if a stranger ever tried to grab her, she was supposed to hit and kick and scream and try to draw as much attention as she could. So she'd tried that too, and even though it didn't stop the big mean guy with wings who had pretended to be her daddy, that other lizard monster sure didn't like it when she'd kicked him in the knee.

But now that there were two lizard monsters in the cell AND a shadow deedum thing with unblinking eyes staring at her, Caitlin didn't know what to do next. So she just stood silently, confused and frightened, and desperately wondering if she could run past those two monsters and out the open door. But those green things with the bared fangs and jagged fists were just too big and scary to try it. Then the deedum thing interrupted her childish plans of escape.

"What was it that you were singing, brat?" Shadow Demon demanded, brusque and suspicious.

"Um, _Ol' MacDonald Had A Farm_," Caitlin answered honestly, as if that explained everything.

"_WHY_ were you singing it?" Shadow Demon barked.

"Um," Caitlin hedged, now fearing that this shadowy deedum thing addressing her was a ghost. That was the only thing she could think of to explain why she could see the lizard monsters _through_ him. "Um, 'cause."

"Because _WHY_?" Shadow Demon snapped, a note of frustration at this blasted human child rising in his voice.

"'Cause I don't like it here," Caitlin finally sniffled, looking away at the stony floor. "'Cause Mommy told me if I'm ever alone an' it's all scary 'cause I'm alone, she told me to sing a song an' I won't feel so bad."

"Very well, then," Shadow Demon hissed, crossing his insubstantial arms. Somehow he projected an air of smug pride in his ability to deal with a child like this where the lizard men had failed. "And now you will be silent and sing no more songs, or you will never see your mother or your father or anyone else, ever again! Am I understood?"

That threat was too much. Tears welled up in Caitlin's wide eyes, and her lower lip trembled at Shadow Demon's words. Suddenly she burst into a tearful wail that echoed down the hall and made the lizard men's hands fly to their ear holes.

"Child! Be silent!" Shadow Demon ordered when his idea obviously backfired, but he could barely be heard above Caitlin's anguished howl.

"Make her ssstop!" one of the lizard men demanded. Though they were held in check by their Master's orders to not harm the child, by the looks on their reptilian faces, they were desperately weighing the risks of abandoning their posts and fleeing the dungeon entirely.

"Stop! Stop it!" Shadow Demon shouted frantically, grabbing the child's arm with his ghostly fingers. Faced with losing two guards over this, he yelled in a panicky voice over her sobbing cries, "Be silent! You will be taken to your parents tomorrow! Do you hear me? I said you will see your mother and father tomorrow! Now stop crying!"

Caitlin's wail subsided into sniffles and tearful hiccups. "Tomorrow?" _Sniff_. "Promise?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes! Yes! You will leave this place and see your parents tomorrow. Now stop wailing, you intolerable brat! And no more singing!" Without waiting for Caitlin's answer, Shadow Demon turned and floated from the room in a peeved huff, muttering something unflattering about the child's parentage.

"Okay, Mister Deedum! Thank you!" Caitlin called after the retreating, and now completely humiliated, shadow.

**O.O.O**

The two guards, who had held on to their sanity by mere threads, pushed the heavy door shut and locked it. How much gladder they were now that the dreadful farming song had ended!

But when they turned, both jumped at least a yard straight up when they discovered that Shadow Demon was still there, floating just inches from their faces. What now? They glanced at one another, suddenly feeling guilty. Were they to receive some sort of punishment for their inability to endure the prisoner's constant screeching?

Looking each of them in the eye, Shadow Demon raised a finger and said, very slowly and significantly, "Not a word, do I make myself clear?"

"Yesss, yesss, of courssse!" the lizard men agreed, and, saluting, they quickly took up their guard posts again.

Shadow Demon turned and drifted up the dank stairway, muttering in a slightly unhinged way about how terror had failed him, and that he'd actually had to give in and placate that vile little creature.

It didn't help matters any when a distinctly reptilian snicker echoed in the dungeon behind him.

**O.O.O**

"Rahmoud, we were wondering if you could explain a few things, now that we're settled?"

The group had ridden hard all afternoon, but once the suns slipped below the horizon and the stars twinkled in the sky, they were forced to find shelter for the night. Many of Rahmoud's men knew the vast desert as well as they knew their own homes, and pushed the group on to the safety of a small oasis in the area, one that was thankfully not defended by Sandmen or cursed to doom unwary travelers. Once their horses were watered, Rahmoud's faithful servants set about making camp. Perhaps it was not so surprising that they had come prepared with provisions for twice their number, and were easily able to provide shelter by fastening together the saddle blankets taken from the horses' backs to form several small tents. The men also started a fire in the middle of their camp, kindled from clumps of dried weeds, prickly brush, and what little fallen wood was found beneath the trees ringing the oasis.

Seated on a cushion made of his folded traveling cloak, the King of the Desert wore a thoughtful expression on his bearded face as he watched an agitated Rob working out his aggressions by silently pitching rocks at the trees ringing the oasis, but he looked up with attentive interest at Hank's question. "Of course, my son," he answered. "You wish to hear tales of the Gem which Venger craves, no?"

"Yeah, that's right," Hank agreed, as he and the others, realizing they were at last getting some answers, gathered to sit or stand around Rahmoud and hear what he had to say. Behind them, the Khadisian riders continued to feed the fire as one of them put dried rations in a pot of boiling water, producing a thick traveler's soup for their evening meal. "We know a little, based on the Prophecy. But I need to know why it's so important that Venger ..." Hank's voice cracked on the next word, and he had to swallow hard before he could continue, "That Venger kidnapped Caitlin. You gave the Gem to us in such a hurry right before we left that you didn't have a chance to really tell us what was going on."

"Indeed, I do recall as much. Where to begin?" Rahmoud wondered aloud. "Perhaps I must tell you the epic story of the great Veil of the Dead. Or perhaps I shall tell a shortened version, for our time is brief and we must yet find the time to sleep. I will say this, then. It is told amongst my people that there are two Worlds of Mortal Men: The one into which we are born, and the one into which we die."

A few of his listeners nodded quietly; the Afterlife was a familiar enough concept in nearly every culture.

"Yet as close as they are, these two worlds must remain forever separate. Think, my children, what would happen should the Spirits of the Dead mingle with those of the Living," Rahmoud continued, with an expansive gesture that included every living creature in his entire Kingdom. "This is what I think you would say is a 'bad thing.' No, the Dead must go Beyond, to a far different and far greater world than this. And so there is a great Veil, a ... how do you say? A 'force field'?" The comment earned a few vague grins, so the King took that as confirmation. "Yes, a force field, forever isolating this world from the next. It is so written that a soul passes through this Veil only once, on his silent journey through the Mists at Death's side."

Rahmoud's face darkened a little, and he paused to take a draught of the oasis's cool waters from a small silver goblet sitting near his feet. King or no, he was somewhat uncomfortable with the implications of the part of the legend he was about to speak. "But many die with great regrets, while others die with great longing to return to the ones they left behind. Still others pass beyond the Veil with a dreadful bitterness and envy of those who still live. This terrible longing to return, the collective grief of the Dead, so it is said, formed itself into a tear of crystalline stone, and the Great Veil itself wept the sorrow of all those who had passed beyond. This was thought to be only a legend from the very beginning of Time," he explained, a wry smile touching his bearded features, "until five thousand long years ago, when Hadarif the Steadfast, the great ancestor of your old Rahmoud, discovered the stony tear and brought it to Khadish."

As he spoke, Sheila had drawn the Gem from her pouch, and dangled the now indigo-blue treasure by the keychain to which it was still attached. "And that would be this," she commented.

"Verily, it is so," Rahmoud agreed. "But as the story has passed from the lips of Hadarif himself and down through many generations, it is told that with the Gem came a vision to my ancestor. Before him, a great light with no source shone bright without burning as he laid his hand upon the Gem, and the air was filled with the gentle sound of softly feathered wings. The Steadfast Hadarif fell to his knees, and there, in the light, he saw a woman, fair and pale of face, black of eye and slender as the reeds that sway at the bank of the river. He knew not if he beheld a forgiving angel, or the Spirit of Death herself. To him, she spoke these words-"

"Let me guess," said Eric quietly, straightening his posture and preparing to recite. "She said, quote, _When Death first outstretched her slender white hand, the Veil of the Dead wept a tear of stone. Though Death's subjects are hers forever, at the passing of four millennia and one, through the threadbare Veil those who have entered her kingdom shall reach in vain. Yet with the Sadness of the Veil at his command, one shall stand and call forth his ilk, and the shadow of evil shall roam the land even in brightest of day. Eternal darkness shall be spared the Realm only if the Tear of the Veil be placed in the hands of a child._ Right?"

Rahmoud looked more than a little impressed. "Very good, my son!" he exclaimed. "After these many years, to remember so well!"

Despite the circumstances, a flash of the old Eric shone through his grave concern, and for just a moment, he looked rather proud of himself. "Hey, something _that_ weird is kinda hard to forget."

"This is starting to make sense," Diana said then, brightening after a moment in deep concentration. "Four millennia and one, right? So that's five thousand years, and you said this Gem was found five thousand years ago. So basically, the timelines have come together, so that means whatever the Prophecy is talking about is supposed to happen pretty soon, right?"

"Perhaps sooner than we would care," Rahmoud agreed. "The Veil is not as ... how do you say ... 'one way' as we might hope. Ghosts and shades roam the world of Mortal men, as you have seen with your own eyes. The Dead do escape, for many things can influence the Veil and cause it to thin. Magic, the alignment of the stars and planets, even the desire of the aggrieved loved ones who wish too strongly to see the deceased again. And it is spoken that on a day in which the suns are weakest and the moons all wax full, when the stars fall into place and the bright comet Sabah appears above the Sands of Muswaf, there and then, the Veil will be weakest. This day only happens once every five thousand years, my children. It is called the Day of Shahvin, for which the Gem is named. It is on this day that the grief and desire of the Dead might be enough to reach through the Veil and escape in great numbers. Doubly so if the Gem stands before the Veil at its weakest point at the precise moment when the stars and planets align."

"Wait a minute, hold on," Presto said, breaking the rapt silence with which he had been listening. "You mean this Veil is an actual thing? A place, like a great big 'IN' door to the other side?"

Rahmoud frowned slightly at this. How could he explain such a thing, when he himself had never seen it? He spoke now in terms of myths and legends, though from the moment he had first laid eyes on the Gem, he had known beyond a doubt the truth behind the tales. "Yes, and no, my son," he replied. "Perhaps I do not explain myself clearly," he admitted with a ghost of a smile. "I forget myself. You spent precious little time in my kingdom, my children. I could not expect you to have learned and remembered everything in those short years. The Veil is all around us, everywhere at once, forever separating us from the spirits of the deceased who might be hovering about your ears, even as we speak. It is not, as you say, a door that we might reach out and open with our hands. But when it weakens, it thins more in some spots than others. On the Day of Shahvin, it will be thinnest again at the point where the Tear was wept all those centuries ago." He looked through the deep night of the desert towards the northwest, the same direction they had been grimly following all day. "Somewhere in that direction. The legends are no more precise than that."

It was then that the group was approached by one of the other riders. Bhujar was the only one of Rahmoud's men who was obviously not a powerful desert warrior. Dressed in robes of saffron yellow, with a stone of carnelian set in the aigrette pinned to his turban, he bowed low and respectfully to his king and asked permission to speak. Most of the gang remembered him from their days in Khadish; he was Rahmoud's wisest and most trusted court sage.

"The mighty King's words have fallen upon these most unworthy ears," he said in halting and heavily accented Common, a langue in which he was not perfectly fluent. "And most humbly I beg offering unto thee further knowledge. The Veil thins even now, and the grief and envy of the Dead call out to flee their captivity. The Tear of the Veil darkens as their strength and desire grow stronger while the Veil weakens. The Spirits know well that the Tear is all that is needed to free them. The Gem, it does not guide us. It is the Dead who desire escape that are calling it home."

"That's creepy," Sheila said with finality, stuffing the Gem back into her pouch so she wouldn't have to look at its flowing blue depths in the firelight any more.

"But it makes sense," Eric added, nodding as the details fell into place. "That bit in the Prophecy about the one commanding the Sadness of the Veil and 'calling forth his ilk.' That's why Venger wants the Gem. He's going to try to control who can escape through the Veil, and basically release only the nastiest spirits into the Realm."

"So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't," Diana summed it up. "If we give him the Gem, the Evil Dead take over the Realm. If we don't, then we never see Caitlin again." Her shoulders were squared in that familiar determination that marked her approach to everything in life, both in the Realm and on Earth. "So we have to make a third option for ourselves: Getting Caitlin back without letting Venger have the Gem."

"And Venger's doing everything in his power to make us hand it over," Hank assessed. "He must know he only has one shot at this plan of his, since this Shavin day happens only once every five thousand years."

"So at least we know why he spent all that power coming to Earth," Sheila realized. Tucking her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs, she shuddered and asked, "I wonder how long he was watching us, waiting for a chance to ... to take Caitlin?"

"Or any of us," Presto added quietly. "We don't really know if he wanted Caitlin specifically, or if he was just waiting for the right opportunity to grab any one of us."

"That's just too weird to think about," Eric said. He crossed his arms and looked like he was trying not to consider it, but no one could help being a little creeped out by the thought that Venger had been secretly observing them all this whole time. "Man, if he spied on me and it turns out I was in the shower, I hope he gouged his own eyeballs out with his bare hands!"

"Eric ..." Diana began in a low, warning tone, glancing significantly to where Hank was putting a comforting arm around Sheila's shoulders.

Quickly changing the subject before he put his foot in it further, the blushing Cavalier hurriedly asked, "Rahmoud, just when is this Day of Shahvin supposed to be, anyway?"

Neither Rahmoud nor Bhujar answered right away. Instead, as some of the other men moved quietly through the camp passing out bowls of hot stew for dinner, the two of them cast their eyes skyward. There, to the west, barely visible over the bright light of the high-leaping campfire, they could see a hazy streak blurring across the star-dotted sky. It had appeared four nights ago, growing ever brighter and larger with each passing evening, as the sages hurried to read the signs and the ancient texts. Sights of such celestial bodies were portent enough to change the course of kingdoms and send people running in fear of words whispered across the centuries. The ancients had named this phenomenon the comet Sabah.

Finally, Rahmoud answered Eric's question with one simple, resigned word. "Tomorrow."

**O.O.O**

For a long, silent moment, the group stared up at the comet in the sky, or off into the darkness shrouding the desert to the northwest, as the orange light from the leaping campfire flickered across their grim faces. At last the puzzle pieces had all begun to fall into place, and the picture they were forming was a bleak one.

"Tomorrow, huh?" Diana repeated quietly, breaking the brooding silence that had until then been interrupted only by the crackling of the fire.

"Tomorrow, yes," Bhujar nodded, bowing graciously to the King's 'daughter.' "Tomorrow at the setting of the suns, just as the last fingers of light of the red sun sink below the horizon. That is when all will align and the Veil weakens most."

"Doesn't leave us a lot of time, does it?" Diana mused. "No wonder Venger was so desperate." Shivering, she tried to convince herself that it was the cold nighttime air of the desert that was getting to her. Even though the halter that she once wore had been replaced by a more modest half-sleeved crop top, her legs and well-toned midriff were still bare, leaving her sensitive to the night's chill. Or at least that's what she would have said if anyone asked why she was shivering. "So, Caitlin's only got twenty-four hours to … uh, I mean, we've only got twenty-four hours to figure out a rescue, even though we only have a vague sort of idea where we're going and not a clue what to do when we get there!

"Then why aren't we moving?" demanded Rob, speaking for the first time since this conversation had begun. There was a cold rage in his eyes as he strained to see through the darkness to the northwest. Slapping the end of his Club into his hand, he continued, "The sooner we find this place, the better! We'll figure out the rest when we get there! I've already figured out half a dozen things I'm gonna do to Venger if he so much as touches Caitlin!"

"No, my son," Rahmoud sighed. "Though my heart too demands that we ride on without another moment's delay, it is not wise to travel the desert by night. Heed the words of an old man of the desert. We must camp here where we are safe."

"But ..." Rob began.

"My son, the desert is a fickle and temperamental hostess even in brightest day," Rahmoud explained, holding up his hand to show that he would hear no argument. "But though the air may be cooler and sweeter, there are far too many dangers that hide in the blanket of the blackest night. What help would you be to our little Cait-a-lin if you rode unawares into the sinking sands? Or if, under the cover of darkness, you were surprised by one of the many fell and hungry beasts that hide from the heat of the suns by day, to prowl the cool of night? Sandmen are not the only things we might encounter, my children. There are many other dangers about, from which the faces of the suns are our greatest shield. No, we must sleep here tonight, for we need rest as well as safety. We are protected well by the fire and by my loyal guards."

"Well ... if that's the case, would you all excuse me?" Terri said after drinking her soup in a few quick gulps. "I think I should try to go get some sleep." She didn't look the least bit sleepy; in fact, worry would probably keep her up half the night. But as she set her bowl down and tucked her velvet cape around her shoulders, she explained, "I'll have a dream about this tonight, I know I will. Let's just hope it's helpful." As the others bid her good night, she tried to look hopeful as she disappeared into the low tent that Rahmoud's men had set up for her.

"With luck, Fortune will smile upon her dreams and grant us more guidance tomorrow than we have had today, no?" Rahmoud commented, which sounded like a tacit admission that he really didn't know where they were going or what they were doing either "Already it is nearing midnight. The dawning of Shahvin grows ever nearer."

"Uh, yeah, Rahmoud, about that," Presto asked, his hands fidgeting over the appropriateness of changing the subject like this. "Is this supposed to be a really powerful magical day? I mean, the closer we get to the actual, you know, alignment and all, does it make the natural magic in the Realm go all wonky or anything?"

"Wonky?" Rahmoud frowned. "What is this word, 'wonky'?"

"He means, does it make magic things do stuff that's weird or all wrong?" Eric chimed in. "You know, like the crazy things his Hat always used to do before, only worse."

Presto glared at his friend, but now was not the time for a snappy retort. Instead, he continued to explain to Rahmoud, "How about if I said, 'Does it make the natural magic of this world act other than the way it should?' Does that make more sense?"

"Ah, yes indeed, your meaning is now as clear as the waters of this oasis," Rahmoud nodded. "_Wonky_. I shall remember this word. But as to your question, my son, perhaps the wise Bhujar might answer better than I."

Bowing humbly to his King, the sage replied, "The answer would seem as no, Your Highness. It is written that the alignment of the planets and stars affects only the Veil. Nowhere do the ancient texts describe a changing to the fields of magic that swirl and eddy about our heads. Though in this lowly servant's most humble and base opinion, such a great power cannot help but affecting the lesser forces around it. Perhaps if the good master shall be so kind as to sharing exactly what it is that he has seen that is to be considered ... er … wonky?"

"Well, I'm not counting that most of our costumes are a little different when we arrived," Presto admitted. Of all of them, only Hank and Eric had costumes which had undergone no visible changes, except possibly for size. "I bet that's … whoever or whatever it is, is sort of adapting to the fact that we've all grown up. But what Eric said about how my Hat always used to do weird stuff before? All the sudden, it's just the opposite. Maybe it's goofed up once or twice, but, this time around, for the most part it's giving me exactly what I ask for. Okay, even I can admit that's weird! But that's not really what I'm talking about either."

With a perfectly contained sigh, Rahmoud simply made a gesture of curiosity, having never forgotten Presto's tendency to ramble slightly until his thoughts were collected.

"I guess, really, the first strange thing was right after we got here," Presto finally decided. "Venger beat the crap out of Hank right before we arrived. I mean, he looked really bad. Broken nose and everything. Sheila was trying to help him, but we didn't have a first aid kit or anything. Then she said that she wished there was something she could, you know, do to make it better, and I swear, all of the sudden Hank just healed right up. Just like that."

"Presto, for the thousandth time, I don't think it had anything to do with me wishing he'd get better," Sheila protested before Rahmoud could answer. "You know as well as I do that wishes don't just get granted like that, even here. And I sure don't have one of those Rings of Wishes or anything, as much as we could use one now ... Rahmoud, why are you laughing?"

"Aha!" the Desert King smiled. "So you finally begin to uncover the truth!"

Rahmoud's listeners all frowned in surprise, looking at one another questioningly. Finally, Eric spoke for all of them. "The truth? Okay, I'll bite. Oh Mighty King of Khadish, what the heck are you talking about?"

"The great Dungeon Master does not choose his pupils lightly," Rahmoud explained, doing his best to put the motives of such a mysterious and mercurial being into words. "No, each and every one of his students must possess within them some spark of the natural magic of which you speak. It is a fruitless exercise for him to take on as a pupil a brute who can do naught but swing a sword. It was this magic in each of you that caused you to be brought into this world, for it is given to me to understand that such magic has little place in your world. Have you not realized this by now?"

"What magic?" Sheila demanded stubbornly. "I mean, it's pretty clear that Terri has some special power, but look at the rest of us. We don't have anything special other than our Weapons, and those don't run on any kind of power that comes from inside us."

"It is not your Weapons of which I speak," Rahmoud said patiently. "Though they are magical unto themselves, I think, perhaps, that the Weapons granted to you have little or nothing to do with the type of magic that flows in your veins. Tell me, my child, for an old man's memory can fade. In the happy years that you dwelt in my home, did you not say how you had spoken with the little Pixies, though you knew not how it came to be that you understood their language?"

"I ... well, yes," Sheila admitted. "What, are you saying that was some sort of magic?"

Rahmoud nodded as if Sheila had just confirmed everything, although she clearly didn't understand what he was getting at. "And you, my son," Rahmoud added, turning to Presto. "I remember well the tales of how you saved the town of Helix from certain destruction. Did you not say you used your magic Hat neither when you undid the spell, nor when you recast it to halt the dragons?"

"No ... no, I guess I didn't," Presto recalled. "I followed the spell book. I couldn't have used my hat when I, you know, fixed the spell, because Venger had taken it. And ... and I did something kind of the same without my Hat in Dastirum."

"There, you see, my son?" Rahmoud laughed. "You worked magic with your heart and your hands, not with any Weapon given you! You used the magic within you! Shall I tell you what your old Rahmoud thinks? It is not so much that your magic Hat behaves better for you. It is your own maturity that at last enables you to control it!"

Presto first looked astounded, and then, very thoughtful. Taking off his Hat, he opened it as if he were about to try conjuring something, but instead he quietly stared into its glowing interior with a deeply contemplative expression.

"But what has this got to do with healing Hank's face?" Sheila asked. While Rahmoud's assessment made sense for Presto, in Sheila's case it was only more confusing.

Rahmoud studied her with a smile, as if he had been the keeper of a great surprise, and was now considering the greatest way in which to tell her. Finally, he asked, "What is it that you did tell these old ears as we rode this afternoon? When I asked how it was you had spent these past years in your own world? You replied that you had been studying to become a … how did you say? A nurse, one who aids the healers … the _doctors_, you call them, and assists in the healing of patients." Seeing Sheila's nod, he leaned forward and asked her seriously, "Why is it that you chose to be educated thus?"

The question left Sheila taken aback. "I don't know," she admitted. "It just ... felt right. I guess it was like when we were in Dastirum. I had that Healing Net, the one I took from the Dragon's Graveyard. I know I helped save a lot of people with it, and it … well, it felt good. I guess I realized that helping people like that was the kind of thing I really wanted to do with the rest of my life. I just … everything sort of got derailed when Caitlin came along, especially after we got home. But once she started preschool, I finally had a little time so I started taking a couple Nursing classes at the community college. Everything just seemed like it fell into place, and it turned out I was pretty good at it."

Rahmoud nodded with an encouraging smile. Though he hadn't had the chance yet to hear the particulars, nothing that Sheila said had surprised him. Admittedly, he wasn't quite sure what a 'community college' was, but assumed it was something like either Khadish's public academies or a guild apprenticeship. "And what mean you, my child, when you say everything 'fell into place' as it did?"

"Well, just, everything," Sheila answered. "Money was pretty tight at first, but I got a scholarship that paid for my first year's tuition, and I don't even remember applying for it. Then my mom and dad found a little extra money to help pay for my books, and even better, my mom managed to rearrange her schedule so she could babysit Caitlin while I was in class."

"Don't forget the internship," Hank prompted.

"Right," Sheila agreed. "I was doing an unpaid internship with a hospital for one of my classes, and next thing I knew, I'm considered temporary staff who's entitled to a paycheck! They even liked me so much that they offered me a permanent part time position once I finished the internship. Sure, it was minimum wage and only a few hours a week cleaning up and filing paperwork, but it got my foot in the door until I officially got certified as a Nursing Assistant." Shrugging, Sheila explained helplessly, "That's what I mean by everything falling into place. It's like once I made the decision, it was like there was this, _force_, I'd guess you'd say, that started driving me in the right direction."

"And now you display healing magic," Rahmoud nodded. "I think, my child, that perhaps you always possessed this magic, though you did not know it and therefore could not wield it. As with you all, it is simply that you have grown older and wiser which has at last shaped and revealed your powers in this world. I know from the great Dungeon Master that you all have the magic within you, though he did not deign to tell me what these magics may be. But I know what I have observed and what I have heard you tell."

Turning to the slightly startled Cavalier, Rahmoud continued to explain, "Master Eric, my stubborn son, there is no small significance to the fact that great Dungeon Master himself allowed you to wield his power for a day. He has said, and I believe as well, that this power did not abandon you entirely simply because you surrendered the red robes. You do not have to answer that, my son, but do not look so surprised. Or so offended, for that matter, for I know how you do so dearly love being compared to the Dungeon Master. And you, my beautiful Diana," he added to the Acrobat, "think upon Starfall and the City of Turad, and realize the power you possess."

Diana looked away uncomfortably, but nodded nonetheless. "No surprise there," she agreed quietly.

"And you, Master Bobby ... whoops, Rrrob!" Rahmoud corrected himself with a smile at Rob's mock frown. "Hm. Your magic yet obscures itself, for you were perhaps too young to manifest a great display of power in your first tenure in this world. Still, mark well that not everyone could befriend a unicorn and earn such undying loyalty, from so rare a magical creature, that she willingly abandoned her own kind to remain with you. A unicorn is no mere puppy that would follow anyone who tossed it scraps and offered a pat on the head."

Rob lightly scuffed at the sand beneath his boots and chewed his lip for a moment. "I guess I kinda thought so too," he agreed quietly. "And y'know, right now I really miss her."

"Rest assured that I personally returned her safely to the Valley once you had departed my kingdom, my son. She is well and likely misses you as much. And as for you, my son," Rahmoud finished, turning to Hank. "It is known to me that you too hold great magic, though the meaning of its form yet eludes me."

"Uh, no, not really," Hank countered. "Look, unlike just about everybody else, I never talked to pixies or cast a spell or took over for Dungeon Master. I don't remember doing anything that you could consider even remotely magical."

"Do you not? Indeed?" Rahmoud asked, with an amused smile on his face. "And yet you had described it to me with your own tongue."

Looking blankly at Sheila, Hank shrugged. "Sorry, my mind's kind of elsewhere. You're going to have to remind me."

"Very well then," Rahmoud nodded. "As all of you told me of your many adventures before coming to dwell beneath my roof, I remember well the story of the Lost Tower of the Celestial Knights, and the object that you sought within."

"Oh, yeah, who could forget _that_ dork-faced little adventure?" Eric muttered sourly.

"You mean the Circle of Power?" Hank asked, ignoring Eric's comment for the moment. "What about it?"

"Once you had all overcome the tests you were subject to and were reunited, my son," Rahmoud asked Hank with particular intensity, "what did you do next?"

"Well, I grabbed the Circle," Hank shrugged again. "Then we went to find Dekkion ..." He paused when Rahmoud held up a hand to interrupt.

"No, no, my son! You forget an important detail that you then told me, one which I remember well, for my curiosity was piqued when you admitted you knew not how to explain it at the time. What happened _after you claimed the Circle_?"

Hank clearly had no idea what Rahmoud wanted for an answer. "God, I hope you're not talking about when Venger melted my face! I really don't need to think about that right now, all right? Can you just tell me what you're trying to say?"

"By the gods above," Rahmoud commented, shaking his head as he addressed the starry sky. "The years have been unkind to his memory! He has forgotten the bright and mystical glow from the Circle as it responded the moment he touched it!" Addressing Hank again, Rahmoud continued, "At the time, did you not ponder greatly the significance of this? Did you not even tell old Rahmoud that you wondered why the Circle glowed at your touch, but not when it was later held by Master Presto, nor by the Dark Lord Venger?"

Warily, Hank glanced at his friends who had witnessed the event in the Tower. Where was Rahmoud going with this? "Oh ... that," Hank said slowly. "Well, I guess eventually I just assumed that the Circle was 'reactivating' itself. I figured it must have been, I don't know, lying dormant all those centuries and it sort of woke up when I moved it."

"That too is a possibility," Rahmoud conceded. "Though I believe that perhaps the Circle might have, how shall I say, 'recognized' something as it awoke? You tell me that you felt a bright wave of its power as you held it, yet Master Presto, who also held it, tells no similar tale. Do you not consider that this might mean the Circle responded to _your_ power as well, my son?"

"Well, that's because ... I ... dunno," Hank admitted. He glanced at Sheila, who was sitting beside him and studying him with the same perplexed look that she had worn when Rahmoud suggested the power that she herself might possess. "And I guess we can't really ask the Circle, because we destroyed it, and we never saw Dekkion after that, either."

"Verily this is so," Rahmoud nodded. "Perhaps we shall never know for certain. And while I honor your request that we do not think of the moment when the Dark Lord 'melted your face' as you say, I cannot help my certainty that surviving such a magical attack without lasting harm is not something that a mere, powerless brute could accomplish."

"That wasn't me," Hank countered. "Dekkion managed to stop Venger on that one."

"And it is the Celestial Knight who reversed the damage of the spell?" Rahmoud asked calmly.

"Uh … no, actually, I don't know what happened after that," Hank faltered. "I came to, and I was just okay."

"Blame no one but yourself for your recovery, my son." Rahmoud smiled. "I state again, there is magic within you all, my children. And perhaps it is this magic that will make a difference tomorrow as we prevent the Dark Lord from taking the Stone when we demand our little Cait-a-lin back."

"But ... we don't know how to use it! Or even if we really have it for sure," Rob protested.

"And I most certainly have not the skills to teach you," Rahmoud answered as he rose from his cushion. "Nor the time. It is late, my children," he said simply as he stretched. "We must sleep now, for we know not how long the ride shall be tomorrow, nor what trials we might face at its end. Good night, my children," he said as he moved across the camp towards the tent that his men had built for him. "Sleep as well as you can, considering the thoughts with which I have filled your heads."

Rahmoud was right. It was almost midnight and the group had endured a long, hard day. Drained physically as well as emotionally, Hank and Sheila followed his example and also bade everyone good night. Only a few minutes later, Rob, who was still used to going to sleep early to get up early for school, found his eyelids drooping and was soon off to bed himself. But Eric, Presto and Diana stayed up a while longer, quietly trying to devise some sort of plan for facing Venger while inwardly pondering the mysterious magic that both Dungeon Master and Rahmoud seemed to believe they possessed.

Behind them, mocking shadows danced carelessly across the somber mood of the camp as the men standing watch tossed more dry brush onto the blazing campfire that leaped high into the starry night.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

When Rob crawled out of his tent the next morning, stretching in the crisp, dewy air, one of the first things he noticed was that Terri was already awake. He spotted her standing alone on the crest of a small dune about fifty yards away, staring intently to the northwest. Even at this distance, it was easy to tell from her body language that she was thinking hard about something. A dream, maybe? Was she remembering a clue that might help them get out of this mess?

"G'morning," Rob said absently as he passed one of the desert warriors who busied himself preparing a light breakfast while the rest of the camp slumbered. He stopped when the man looked up with a mildly quizzical expression. "Oh, um ..." Rob stammered, realizing he had not been understood. Quickly reaching back over the past four years in his mind, he found what he wanted to remember and tried the greeting again in Khadisian.

He got it mostly right, for the man smiled and returned the salutation before turning his attention back to the meal he was cooking._ Hey,_ Rob thought to himself as he walked toward the dune where Terri stood, _I remember this stuff! I bet I could pick up Khadisian again easy!_

Though it cheered him for an absurd moment, the very next second his heart sank when he comprehended what he'd just admitted to himself. 'Picking up Khadisian again' carried the implication of staying in Khadish for a long period of time. In all the chaos and heartache in the wake of Caitlin's kidnapping, that was the 800-pound gorilla no one had openly acknowledged yet. How were they supposed to get home once they'd rescued Caitlin? Dungeon Master had already said it was Venger's doing that they were back in the Realm again. The likelihood that Ol' Horn Head would just kindly let them go back home once this was all over was about as slim as the margin Rob had passed Algebra by.

Dungeon Master himself had told them many times that he could not just provide them with a portal home. He'd never expounded on that comment further, but the long and short of it was that they couldn't simply ask for a way home and expect to receive it.

They were stuck here again.

Rob's stomach lurched at the thought, but there was no way around it. Once they'd finally given up the quest and settled in Khadish the first time they were here, the eventual portal home that appeared when Caitlin was almost two was a complete fluke, nothing that would ever happen predictably again. So now, unless the day of Shahvin had some mystical world-hopping effects that Rahmoud had failed to mention, it looked like their options boiled down to one of two things once they'd rescued Caitlin: Either going back to the miserable life of questing for the way home while solving impossible riddles, saving the Realm, and dodging the deathtraps set by their archenemy, or else choosing to accept that their fates seemed to be bound up in the Realm, and remaining in the welcoming haven of Khadish.

But those decisions would have to wait. The big concern, the _only_ concern, was rescuing Caitlin, and anything else could be dealt with in its own time. Firmly tucking away the unwelcome possibilities into the 'Worry About It Later' file in his brain, he finished the slight climb up the low dune and was about to call to Terri.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," she commented quietly, not turning around or giving any other indication that a sound had given away his approach.

"What, you mean you didn't see me coming up this hill in a dream?" Rob teased, wrapping his arms around her shoulders from behind and giving her a big good-morning hug.

"Oh, sure I did. But with you, you're always late for everything, so I can't even be sure my dream's right!" she answered with a small laugh.

The two of them fell silent for a few moments, looking across the sandy vista of the desert as it shimmered beneath a sky pink from the rising suns. Here and there in the distance, a tiny shape skittered across the sand, seeking a cool spot to hide from the approaching heat of the new day.

Neither of them was paying particular attention to the breathtaking view. Such beautiful things had lost their meaning in the face of danger. Who knew what horrible things Venger might have already done to Caitlin?

"So," Rob finally spoke, interrupting their introspective silence. "Did you have any dreams or anything last night?"

"I did," Terri informed him, much to his relief, but a slight frown creased her features as she continued. "I haven't quite sorted out all the images yet, or figured out all the context, but at least I've got a general idea. It _was_ supposed to be Caitlin. The 'child' in the Prophecy, I mean."

Rob looked a little surprised at this. "Really? But that's crazy. If Caitlin had been carrying the Gem with her, you know Venger would have it by now!"

"No, that's not what I mean," Terri explained. "I mean tonight. You know the thing Rahmoud was telling us about last night, when all the planets and stars align and that Veil thing thins? That's when the Gem is supposed to be placed in her hands."

"Shahvin. And then what?"

"That's what prevents all the dead souls from escaping."

"How's that supposed to work?"

"That's the part I haven't sorted out yet."

"Ah," Rob answered noncommitally.

Terri sighed deeply. "You don't have to say it. I get the point. But that's the way my dreams work, you know that. It doesn't matter if we don't exactly know how Caitlin holding the Gem is supposed to stop the dead from coming through the Veil. It's just what we're supposed to do. And yeah, that part was kind of blurry," she admitted, "but on the upside, at least I have a pretty good idea where we're going now."

Excitement instantly flooded Rob's face at this revelation, and he quickly spun Terri around in his arms until they were face to face. "You do?"

"There's a very old city out there." She gestured to the northwest, where for the first time, Rob noticed a wide, faint road of packed sand stretching vaguely across the desert like a pale, discarded ribbon that disappeared into the horizon. Would that take them where they needed to go?

"It's in ruins, looks like it hasn't been lived in for several thousand years," Terri said of the city she had seen, her eyes far off and unfocussed as she spoke. "Most of it is all crumbled and buried under the sand. I remember walking through it in my dream. Lots of half-standing stone walls, with no roofs or anything. There's a great big building that's sort of intact, though." For a moment, she paused, summoning and expanding the dream images to take another mental tour of them. "Maybe it was ... I dunno, an old palace or something. But that's where we need to go."

"I'll bet you anything that Rahmoud knows right where that is!" Rob exclaimed, grabbing Terri's hand and half-dragging her down the dune and towards the camp. "Come on, let's ask him!"

O.O.O

"Verily, my children, indeed I know well of the ruins of which you speak," Rahmoud nodded as he sipped at a dark, hot beverage that smelled a great deal like coffee and, as Presto had once put it, was 'so thick and syrupy-sweet that you could stand a spoon up in it.' Almost everyone was awake now, gathered around the remains of the campfire where breakfast was being served, and listening intently to the clues that Terri's dream had provided. "There is irony in what your dream has brought you, if this be the place where the Veil of the Dead shall thin the most, where Hadarif the Steadfast found the Gem of Shahvin. It is called the City of the Dead by my people. Few will venture there, for to see a once-thriving city fallen into such ghostly desolation is indeed an ill omen. The legends speak little of this dead city, for its glory rose and fell well before the long memory of Khadish. Therefore we know not why it was abandoned so many millennia ago, but it is whispered that the Dead do walk its streets. Now, perhaps, I begin to understand why, if it is true that the weakest point of the Veil resides there."

"Well, the more important thing is, how far is it?" Hank asked, after giving up his halfhearted attempt to drink the strong, overly sweet Khadisian coffee. Setting the beverage aside, he asked, "Can we get there in time? Before this Shahvin planetary alignment thing happens?"

"We must still tear down and pack away our little camp," Rahmoud answered. "But first, we must find a way to wake Master Eric. And once we have overcome that monumental obstacle, my son, I believe that our swift horses will carry us into the ruins at least an hour before the setting of the suns."

"Stand outside his tent and mention food," Presto suggested, absently playing with his coffee and watching it run off the back of his spoon like warm honey. "That will get him up faster than anything."

"In the meantime, we're going to start breaking camp now," Hank said, rising and then offering a hand up to his wife. "The sooner we can get moving, the better I'll feel." If he'd had his way, they'd have been riding an hour ago, at the first sunrise, even if they had to tie Eric to the saddle while he was still snoring away. Caitlin had been at Venger's dubious mercy for almost two days now, and the time had been pure torture to both her parents. Hank had made it perfectly clear that he was more than ready to tear every single one of Venger's citadels down, brick by brick with his bare hands if he had to, to get his precious little girl out of that 'dark room' that Terri had envisioned.

But for some reason, their group had tarried at the oasis nearly an hour, almost as if Rahmoud and his warriors were expecting something. But even by the time Eric had finally been roused from his sleep and had eaten a quick breakfast, nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Bhujar vaguely mumbled something incomprehensible about Shahvin, but whatever the Khadisians had been anticipating had simply not happened, so they quickly went about packing up the rest of the camp, watering the horses one last time, and dousing last night's campfire with sand and water from the oasis.

Then, with horses mounted and preparations made for the day's travel, a command from Rahmoud set them riding across the desert in a race against the suns' eventual journey to nightfall. Soon, the pounding of the sturdy horses' hooves carried them far away from the welcoming little oasis, and eventually onto the dusty road that Rob had noticed earlier.

A distance of at least a mile was between them and their campsite, when a flicker of darkness passed through the fronds of the trees ringing the little pool of water. Slipping down the shaded side of the tree trunk, it slunk quickly across the sand, to rise up again, half-hidden in the thin, residual smoke still curling up from the extinguished fire. A pair of ghostly white eyes shone between the wisps of smoke.

"Yes, the City of the Dead," Shadow Demon laughed to himself as he watched the horses and their riders fade into the distance. "Perhaps those words are truer than you think!"

**O.O.O**

"Master ..."

"If this is about another soldier complaining about _that child_, I will personally send you all to the Dragon's Graveyard at Tiamat's mealtime!"

Shadow Demon backed off so fast that he nearly phased himself right through the Astronomy lab's wall. Venger's mood had been steadily deteriorating over the past two days, going from his normal brooding anger to outright volatility. He knew that Venger was annoyed enough at his distinct lack of success in making their prisoner cower in obedient fear, but the fact that so many guards came sniveling to him regarding the same subject was about to push the Boss over the edge.

Just to be on the safe side, Shadow Demon ducked behind Venger's astronomical model of their solar system. Venger had spent long hours in its precise, detailed construction, and Shadow Demon knew that the Boss wouldn't dare take a shot at him and risk damaging the results of such excruciatingly exact labor. "N-no, of course not, Master! I return with news of the, er, Outworlders!"

_Outworlders_ was the word Shadow Demon had settled on rather than the presently less-than-accurate "Young Ones." Unfortunately he did not have even a moment to reflect on his cleverness.

"Then you had best be here to tell me that they have found their goal!" Venger snarled, his claws curling into dangerous fists as he advanced on Shadow Demon, his eyes glowing an unholy red. Not only was his patience visibly at an end with his tiny prisoner, but to further complicate matters, they were running out of time as the seconds ticked ever closer to the planetary alignment that would thin the Veil enough for Venger's purposes.

The Boss's moods were capricious and deadly, and Shadow Demon had learned long ago the existence-sparing art of choosing his words very carefully while making it look like he wasn't even pausing for thought. All the while, he managed to keep the solar system model between them without appearing to intentionally do so. "I bring news that their goal is the so-called City of the Dead, well within the borders of the Muswaf desert, and the news that those ruins might be reached by you to await them _before_ their arrival there," he said smoothly, which was his way of admitting that the hated Outworlders had _not_ arrived yet, but which packaged the news so nicely that Venger could not help the malicious grin that slowly spread across his cold features. "I overheard the Dreamer saying she had seen it in the future," he finished.

"Ah, yes, the Khadisians' City of the Dead! Excellent!" Venger almost laughed, surprisingly pleased with this news and the way Shadow Demon put it. "Of course! I should have realized this before!" Then, his eyes narrowed, and he turned his gaze back on Shadow Demon, who was just peeking out from behind the yellow ball that represented the largest sun. "And you are certain the Young Ones have not yet arrived?"

"I am certain, Master," Shadow Demon replied, knowing it was in his own best interests to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. But just how many times did he have to say something before the Boss got the message? "Unless the _Outworlders_ or the Desert King have developed the art of teleportation, they will not reach their goal for several hours."

"Well, then, Shadow Demon, we shall..." Stopping in midsentence, Venger suddenly slammed his hands on the table, flames of fury springing to his eyes. "DID YOU JUST SAY, _THE DESERT KING!_?"

_Oh, Flames of the Abyss!_ "Why ... er ... yes, Master, I did," Shadow Demon stammered, fervently wishing that he had substantial feet to kick himself with. There was the one lie of omission Shadow Demon had worked hard to maintain, yet he'd been too focused on emphasizing his clever new title that he'd let the upsetting news slip far too casually! "It ... it would seem that sometime yesterday, they were joined by King Rahmoud and ... a paltry handful of his warriors."

"How many?" Venger demanded.

"I ... am not certain, Master, I did not have the opportunity to..."

"HOW MANY?!"

"A dozen, no more," Shadow Demon answered quickly, then braced himself to be incinerated for the third time this month.

Surprisingly, the blast never came. Working up his courage and peeking after about ten incredibly tense seconds that grew ever more nerve-wracking as each one took a small eternity to tick by, Shadow Demon saw that Venger almost seemed mollified by the news.

"A dozen," Venger repeated slowly, musing on this turn of events. "That small number is of little consequence." Still, he looked rather displeased by the whole prospect. At least, until he paused to consider the news more thoroughly.

It was no secret that despite easily conquering over half the Realm, to Venger's endless fury, he had never been able to close his grasp around such a vast and wealthy kingdom as Khadish. King Rahmoud was only the latest in a long line of desert sovereigns who led Khadish in its laughing defiance of his might. The mere mention of the name 'Rahmoud' grated on Venger's nerves almost as much as the name 'Tiamat.'

But at long last, the Desert King had made a grave error in openly showing himself beyond the walls of his great capital city with so few warriors to protect him. Shadow Demon knew that many times in the past, the old King had ventured from his city with little or no protection, but his guise of a simple caravan merchant had never failed to help him escape notice. And now, he had ridden forth in the unmistakable regalia of a king? Actually, yes, that was rather foolish.

So foolish, in fact, that Venger began to grin evilly at the possibilities. "Very well, then," he finally decided. "If, as you say, the Young Ones will not reach the City for several hours, there is still time to devise a 'surprise' or two, wouldn't you concur?"

"Yes, of course, Master!" Shadow Demon agreed hastily. He could practically hear the various plots already running through the Boss's mind, but nonetheless, the insubstantial servant rejoiced that he would not have to spend the next few hours regenerating and reanimating himself after being blasted into shadowy shreds. "Do you wish me to return to observing their group?"

"No," Venger said, descending the stairs that led down from the Astronomy lab. "We must depart soon. You will see to it that the prisoner is made ready."

That left Shadow Demon's gladness very short-lived indeed. On the one hand, it meant he didn't have to return to following the Outworlders under the painful, intense light of the desert suns. But the pluses were far outweighed by the fact that he was stuck dealing with that little terror in the dungeon again. "But ..." he began.

Stopping his descent on the staircase, Venger shot Shadow Demon a deadly look over his shoulder. The glare said, in no uncertain terms, that he could easily get himself incinerated anyway, and all it would take would be one more word of protest.

Resigned, Shadow Demon sighed, "Yes, Master," silently wondering if there was any way he could shuffle the paperwork and get _himself_ transferred to the front lines of the siege on Ballamour Hill.

**O.O.O**

"Yo! Earth to Presto!"

It was the hottest part of the day, as the four suns beat down relentlessly from directly overhead to turn the desert into one endless blast furnace. Some time ago, Rahmoud had insisted they stop in the shade of a craggy mesa, for continuing on in such intense temperature without rest would surely result in their deaths from heat exhaustion. There they ate a sparse meal and watered the horses from skins they had filled at the oasis. Afterward, Presto had peeled off his outer robe in an attempt to cool down, and was staring thoughtfully across the endless sea of sand when Rob called for his attention. "Shouldn't that be, 'Realm to Presto'?" he asked as the Barbarian sat down on the boulder next to him.

"Either way, you looked like you were a zillion miles from here," Rob answered. After a few seconds' silent pause, he guessed, "Worried about Caitlin?"

"Yeah," Presto replied, his voice trailing off slightly as he stared off across the desert again. Then he fidgeted with his glasses, adjusting them fruitlessly on his nose before taking them off to wipe the lenses carefully on his sleeve.

"And..?" Rob prompted after a moment. The familiar gesture with the glasses usually meant there was something else on Presto's mind.

"And ..." the Magician admitted with a sigh, putting his glasses back on his face, where they promptly slipped down his nose again. He hadn't wanted to say this, because it would only add to the worried burden the group was already carrying. "And I was thinking about how we're supposed to get out of here once we rescue her. Out of the Realm, I mean."

"Yeah, I hear you," Rob sighed, looking down at his arms crossed on his knees. "Believe me, you're not the only one who's thought about it." Chewing his lip for a moment, he asked, "Let's keep believing Caitlin's okay and Venger hasn't hurt her. So what do you think we should do when we get her back? If we really can't get back home, I mean?"

Presto didn't speak for a long moment, debating whether or not to openly admit to exactly what he'd been thinking. Finally, deciding that Rob would understand as well as anyone, he shrugged and confessed, "Well, I don't know what the others are gonna do, but if we're stuck here again, I mean, I mean, like, REALLY stuck here, I was thinking about looking up Varla."

"Really," Rob said with very little surprise in his voice, as if he'd been expecting Presto to say that. Perhaps not so unexpectedly, Presto had shown the most regrets when they'd left the Realm. When the slightly lovesick Magician had to finally admit he'd left Varla behind for good.

Presto wasn't exactly jealous, but he made no secret of the fact that whenever he saw what Hank and Sheila had between them, and later what Rob and Terri had once they'd found one another again, he repeatedly kicked himself for walking away and never looking back when he had known that Varla was The Girl for him. Even after their unexpected and joyous return to Earth, as crazy as he knew it sounded, Presto probably would have willingly gone back for Varla if only he'd found a way. Surprisingly enough, Presto knew that Rob, of all his friends, could empathize the most ... even at the age of nine, he'd felt much the same way when he found and then lost Terri. The only difference was that Rob had certain knowledge he would eventually see the Dreamer again. Presto had never had that assurance, and though he had tried dating a couple girls since their return to Earth, he eventually admitted, too late, that he'd left his heart and soul in the hands of the lovely, red-haired Illusionist.

"So," Rob continued delicately. "Are you sure she's still going to be there? I mean, do you think she's waiting for you?"

"Yes. She is," Presto answered immediately, firm and absolute confidence in his voice. "I know she is."

"Well ... that's good," Rob said, a bit nonplussed by Presto's utter conviction, but not taking the risk of questioning it further. Instead, he steered the conversation in a slightly different direction. "I was thinking about the same thing earlier," he admitted. "Being stuck here again. And you know, if we really can't get home, I think I'd kind of like to go see if we can find the Valley of the Unicorns, y'know, to see Uni again. I'll bet she'd be real surprised to see us! God, she must be all grown up by now. And can you imagine what Caitlin would think of seeing a whole herd of unicorns? She'd go nuts!"

"I can just picture it," Presto laughed, imagining the excited, squealing six-year-old insisting on riding them all like a little Faerie princess. "I wonder if Caitlin even remembers Uni after all this ... time ..."

Rob sat up in alarm when Presto trailed off to stare with sudden intensity at something far off in the distance. "What? What's the matter?" he asked, looking in all directions as if he wasn't sure what to focus on first. "What do you see?"

"I'm not sure," Presto answered, hurriedly taking his glasses off and wiping them a second time. He stared through the lenses for a moment, then peered over the frames, but he still could not come to a conclusion as to what he saw. "Look at that over there," he pointed. "Waaaay over there."

Rob's eyes followed Presto's gesture, and then he saw what had troubled the Wizard. "What is that?" he asked, squinting at the tiny smudge drifting up from the ground towards the sky. "That's way too small to be a simoom," he judged accurately. The sand storms that swept across the desert were usually of a much more massive front than this appeared to be. Shading his eyes to get a better look, he guessed, "Dust devil?"

Presto grimaced at that suggestion. "I hope not. Don't forget that the Dust Devils here are of the living, thinking, and extremely foul-tempered variety."

"Ugh, right. How could I forget?" Shaking his head, Rob suggested warily, "Maybe it's just some other travelers. I'm okay with that so long as they're just traveling and not following us. At least whatever it is, they're waaay out there right now."

"Um ..." No more satisfied with Rob's weak suggestion than Rob was himself, Presto turned and called for the attention of one of Rahmoud's warriors, who was patiently brushing sand out of his horse's coat. "Uh ... excuse me? Look over there a second, will you?" he asked, pointing to the trail of airborne dust in the distance. "What is that?"

The man frowned, then squinted in the direction that Presto was pointing. Unfortunately, he was one of the Khadisians who did not speak Common very well, for as he sighted the wispy dust cloud, he merely nodded and said, "Yes."

"Great, thanks," Presto sighed as the man went back to grooming his horse.

"Not much help there," Rob muttered. "Should I go get Rahmoud?"

"I dunno," Presto answered thoughtfully. "That guy doesn't seem very concerned, and since he knows what goes on in the desert better than either of us ..." Still not quite content to leave it at that, he added, "I don't want to panic anyone just yet, but if it looks like it's really following us or if it gets any closer, we sound the alarm, 'kay?"

"Deal," Rob agreed, then looked around at their small group. The others seemed to be collecting themselves and preparing to get moving again, on a judgment from Rahmoud that they had rested well and cooled themselves sufficiently. Picking up his Club and sliding it into a loop on his horse's saddle while Presto struggled back into his outer robe, the Barbarian added, "At least we're getting a move on, so we can probably keep a good distance." Swinging himself into the saddle, he adjusted the reins and gave Presto a half-joking, half-serious glare. "Hurry it up, will you? We're going to be almost all the way to the city by the time you get dressed!"

O.O.O

As the day wore on, it became more and more obvious that whatever it was that was out there, kicking up sand as it moved, was definitely following their little group. Rob had lost all track of time in the monotonous stretch of endless sand, but he uneasily thought that a couple hours had passed by now. He was just about to say something when he noticed Eric dropping his horse back until the Cavalier and the Magician were trotting side by side.

"Hey, what do you think that is?" Eric asked, jerking his head to indicate the smudge of disturbed dust floating into the sky far behind them.

"Someone, or something, else is out here," Presto replied. "It's been following us for a while."

"A _while_?" Eric gaped, twisting in his saddle to get a better look. In less than one second, the cloud had gone from a mild curiosity to an imminent threat in his mind. "Just how long is _a while_?"

"Rob and I noticed it when we stopped for lunch," Presto explained. "We weren't really certain if it was, y'know, following us or not, but we're pretty sure now."

"And you didn't say anything?"

"Well, we did," Rob interrupted them. "We mentioned it do him over there." Pointing at the desert soldier they had spoken to, he continued, "But he didn't seem too concerned. Oh, heck with it," he shrugged, "I'm going to ask Terri, see if she knows anything." Urging his horse forward, he left the two others and caught up with the Dreamer, who was several lengths ahead and intently scanning the landscape for any sort of landmark that might have been familiar from her dream. "Hey, Terr," he called, slowing his horse's stride again to match hers.

"Yeah?" she asked, never taking her eyes off of the distance stretching out before them. Rob wasn't sure if that was because she was focused on finding something she was looking for, or whether it was because she still wasn't very confident on horseback and wasn't about to take her eyes off the road for fear of losing her balance.

"Happen to remember if you dreamed anything about someone following us?"

"Um … no, I don't," Terri replied after she'd considered for a long moment. "Why?"

"Because there's someone following us," Rob answered simply.

Surprised, Terri spun her head quickly to glance over her shoulder, but Rob noticed the white-knuckled grip she kept on the reins as she did so. Her horse seemed confused and a little peeved at the way she clamped her knees against his sides to hold on as she turned.

"Take it easy, you're not going to fall off!" Rob told her, leaning over to grab her reins in one hand just in case she lost control. "See it?"

"Yeah," she nodded slowly, turning her eyes forward again. Settling herself in the saddle securely, she shook her head. "But sorry, I don't know what it is. I didn't dream anything like that, at least I don't think so. I definitely saw that we're going to arrive in the City safely, though. So whatever that is, they're not going to catch up to us before we get there."

"Ah, my children, of what is it which you conspire?" a voice interrupted, and they looked up to see that Rahmoud had guided his magnificent stallion up beside them as they were speaking. "These old eyes and ears hear your whispers and see your furtive glances. Tell me, what is it that concerns you so?"

"Well, that," Rob said, pointing behind them.

Whatever reaction Rob was expecting when Rahmoud saw the faint dust cloud, it didn't happen. Instead of alerting his men to draw their swords and expect a challenge to arrive soon, the Desert King instead showed about as much alarm as his warrior had in the shadow of the mesa. "This is what distresses you, my children?" he asked, shrugging slightly. "A caravan?"

"A caravan?" Rob asked, staring at the cloud and trying to imagine a caravan that could have moved quite as fast as it had this afternoon. "I dunno. It's pretty clear they're following us! Maybe even gaining on us. Trust me, Presto and I have been watching all this time."

"So have I." Diana's voice was a surprising addition to the conversation; apparently she too had spotted the dust cloud but, for whatever reason, had elected to say nothing at the time. "You sure that's not some surprise Venger has cooked up for us or something?"

The mention of the name Venger caught the attention of everyone else in the group, and quickly they reined their horses to a halt in alarmed curiosity. "What about Venger?" Sheila almost growled, her tone coldly furious, as if she would gladly welcome whatever was pursuing them if it allowed her the opportunity to get her hands around the Dark Lord's throat. She squinted into the suns-light to get a better look at the evidence of someone traveling the desert behind them. "You think Venger sent someone after us?" she asked with barely-restrained rage and frustration. "How long have they been following us?"

"A few hours that we know of," Rob answered his sister. "But Rahmoud thinks it's just a caravan."

"My children," Rahmoud explained patiently, "I suppose I must admit there is a possibility the Dark Lord follows us. But we tread upon a very ancient trade route, one that is still used today. In centuries past, it is said that this route lead directly to the City of the Dead before it died. Now it cuts a wide berth around those accursed ruins, but the length of road we stand upon here has not changed. In this part of the desert, it is a direction traveled by many, and not by us alone."

Presto seemed doubtful. Diana looked as if she had concerns but wasn't going to express them in the face of Rahmoud's calm certainty. Eric scratched his sunburned head and looked behind them nervously, not speaking, but not yet convinced of their safety. Perhaps it was years of paranoia ingrained from their last tour of the Realm, but none of the Earth-born travelers were quite willing to dismiss their as-yet unseen followers as a mere caravan.

On the other hand, the warriors who followed Rahmoud seemed about as concerned as their King did. In fact, the sage Bhujar was the only one who expressed any opinion of what they saw. "Maybe is could be Venger. Maybe is not. Either way, are long way off," he observed neutrally, if not fluently.

"Indeed," Rahmoud agreed. "And therefore, not yet our concern. For now, we must ride, for the suns travel across the sky heedless of the time we have been allotted. It is ..."

Terri suddenly sat straight up in her saddle, eyes wide but seeing nothing. "Diana!" she gasped.

Rahmoud heard the interruption, guessed what Terri's tone of voice must have meant, and spun around to look at the Acrobat. Her horse had wandered slightly off the road, but there was no danger that he could see. And then he caught sight of the slightly depressed sand where her horse was about to tread. "NO!" he shouted. "My child, do not ride there!"

**O.O.O**

Terri's gasp and Rahmoud's resultant warning shout were probably the only things that saved Diana, for she instinctively pulled back on the reins just as the sand under her horse's front hooves suddenly caved into a large sinkhole. Frightened by the collapsing ground, the sharp pull on the reins, and the flurry of surprised shouts from the Khadisians, the horse reared up with a fearful whinny.

By sheer good fortune, the horse's hind legs were still on solid ground. The animal danced precariously backwards, with Diana clinging tight to the saddle, racing against the rapidly widening sinkhole. Still on its rear legs, it managed to back away far enough and fast enough to find sufficient solid footing. As the animal regained its balance and sprinted away, Diana got a brief but good look into the sinkhole that she had almost fallen into. It was probably nine or ten feet deep, and collapsing so fast that she and her horse could have been buried at the bottom in seconds. And then, just before her horse carried her too far away to see more, her mouth opened in wordless horror when she caught sight of what looked like a round, open maw ringed with rows of dagger-like teeth showing through the shifting sands at the bottom.

"What _IS_ that?" she cried in alarm while trying to control her horse at the same time.

"My child! Get back on the road quickly!" Rahmoud yelled at her, while shouting orders to his men in Khadisian in the same breath. "_Asad! Rhun ib gamir! Harhazhed dunya!_"

Rahmoud's men had wasted no time in reacting to their King's initial shout; the orders he had given were almost unnecessary. Before Diana's horse's front hooves had even touched solid ground again, those armed with crossbows spurred forward, bellowing furious challenges in Khadisian. Their horses leapt to the edge of the sinkhole and cantered there nimbly, carefully judging the stability of the sand while never staying still for more than a second. Sharp whizzes cut through the air as their riders fired their bolts at the gaping mouth at the bottom of the collapsing pit.

Like a piece of gritty chalk squealing across a slate, a cry went up from the thing concealed in the sinkhole when the bolts struck it. Beneath the horses' hooves, the sand shifted dangerously. Then, to the horror of anyone ignorant of the fouler beasts of the desert, they saw why the horses nearest the sinkhole were instinctively refraining from holding still and presenting a stable target. Five starfish-like tentacles emerged from the sand and whipped dangerously through the air, lashing out at whatever had hurt it. Obviously the men and their horses knew what they were dealing with, for they dodged and quickly made way for the next wave of their surprisingly orchestrated attack.

"_EEEEEEEEWWWW_!" Eric screeched when he saw the tentacles, backing his own horse away in near-terror. "It's a Sarlaac!"

The Cavalier's cry, and the wordless screams from both Sheila and Presto, were almost drowned out by the hissing ring of several scimitars being drawn at once. A raging shout went through the swordsmen as they charged their horses at the thing, slashing at the waving tentacles and expertly dodging the heavy blows the thing tried to inflict.

Controlled pandemonium had erupted in mere seconds. Rahmoud shouted something else in Khadisian, and then he too was in the midst of the fight with this strange creature. His scimitar sang as he struck at thing that would have made them its prey, and the sound of the made the creature recoil deeper into the sand as effectively as the multiple, painful injuries it was receiving.

"Let me at it!" Rob roared, leaping down from his horse as he grabbed his Club from its loop on his saddle. "I'll smash it!"

"No you won't!" Terri yelled back at him, though by her tone it sounded more like she was speaking Common Sense rather than Prophetic Dream. With her knees firmly clamped to her horse's sides, she reached down and grabbed him by a leather strap that crossed his back. Urgently, she tried to explain, "You can't smash all five arms at once! You hit one arm and it will hit you right back with the other four! And you can't smash the ground around it and cause an earthquake with everyone so close!"

"Watch me!" Rob exclaimed, turning to face Terri. "I'll take that thing and … oh, geez!" Though his back was now to the creature, Rob's eyes widened in sudden alarm. Forgetting all about what Terri was saying, he grabbed his horned helmet and ducked.

An electric crackle sliced through the air, followed almost instantly by what looked like a swarm of large, angry bees flying at breakneck speed right over Rob's head. Terri shrieked as they whizzed in front of her eyes, and she jumped backwards, desperately grabbing at the saddle horn to keep from sliding off in her surprise.

One hundred competition-grade darts imbedded themselves with remarkably painful precision in the creature's tentacles. At the same time, an explosion of hot, golden light struck the monster squarely in the maw and finished the fight as quickly as it began. The waving tentacles disappeared as the squealing creature retreated painfully, burrowing safely beneath the sands to nurse its wounds.

"I am sick of this bullshit!" Hank practically roared, almost throwing down the Bow that had fired the decisive blast. He didn't appear the least bit pleased with the shot that had so abruptly ended the battle. "Sand monsters, things following us, one more delay and we're not going to make it to Caitlin in time!"

Next to him, Presto, who had quickly recovered from his initial terror in the attack, still held one of the yellow and black darts he had fired at the creature. Stuffing the small missile back into his Hat, he subtly nudged his horse a safer distance away from the livid Ranger and asked hurriedly, "Uh, yeah, what he said … so what exactly was that and how do we keep another one from eating us for, like, an afternoon snack?"

"That was ..." Rahmoud began to answer, but then frowned as he recalled something he thought he'd heard. "What was it that Master Eric did call this vile thing? A ... how you say ... Sarlaac? Is that what such a creature is named on your world, my children?"

Diana cleared her throat loudly and announced with a ghost of a wry smile, "Over to you, Eric!"

"Er ..." Eric stammered, just now realizing what he'd said. "Well, that's not really what we call them," he tried to explain in embarrassment. "That's what they call them on Tatooine. In _Return of the Jedi_. But, I mean, they're not really real. Not on Earth, anyway. And Tatooine isn't even a real place."

It was from long experience that Rahmoud knew to just nod his head at that. Many times in the happy years that his adopted children had dwelt in his palace, he had come to realize and accept that while Master Eric seemed to know what he was talking about, it would be as difficult as the mythical Labors of Zurkheil for anyone else to decipher his meaning. Sometimes it was even more difficult to understand Master Eric than it was to understand the great Dungeon Master, though Rahmoud knew very well that the Cavalier would mightily resent the comparison. "Ah," he answered noncommittally. "I see. Well then, in the common tongue of this world, my children, this thing you do not call a Sarlaac is known as a Dustdigger. Dangerous creatures are they, for they bury their inflated bodies beneath the sand and wait for unsuspecting prey to tread upon them. It is then that they deflate themselves, causing a swiftly collapsing pit to trap a meal, such as my beautiful Diana so nearly demonstrated. But terrible as this may seem, they are even more dangerous by night, for then, when the Lady of the Moons shines her three faces upon the desert, they travel above the sands in the cool cover of darkness. And now, my son," he said directly to Rob, "do you not see why it is safer to travel by the bright light of day, though the warmth of the suns may be difficult to bear?"

"Uh, yeah, gotcha," Rob agreed, looking uncomfortably at the sinkhole, which now appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary hole in the desert sand. There was no telling where the Dustdigger had gone, for there was no sign of it, not even a shifting of the sand to indicate movement beneath. It may have just gone deeper to hide and lick its wounds, but nothing ensured that it hadn't dug sideways into the sand and was now burrowing silently somewhere beneath their feet. "I'd really hate to meet something like that above ground," he admitted. "The tentacley things were bad enough. I don't want to know what the rest of it looked like."

"Well, the important thing is that it's gone now," Hank interrupted, clearly edgy to get moving again. He was already urging his horse forward as he spoke. "And we know how to deal with it if another one shows up. But we're not gaining Caitlin any time by just sitting here, and whatever's following out there is gaining on us. So come on, guys, let's keep going. Sheila, are we still heading in the right direction?"

The Gem in Sheila's hand was midnight blue now. In fact, it was so dark that she had to hold it up so the light of the suns was shining through it before she could identify the nearly-black smoke trail swirling in its depths. "Yeah, we are," she said after a moment of studying the Gem. "And judging by the look of this thing, we must be getting really close."

"Verily, this is so," Rahmoud agreed, looking off into the distance but not yet seeing a sign of the City of the Dead. "For if what Bhujar tells me is correct - and I do not doubt for a moment his word - at this pace we ride, we shall arrive at the fallen gates of this once-proud city in less than two hours. The suns shall disappear beyond the horizon in no more than three. We have little time to tarry. Come, my children! Ride always upon the road, which is firmly packed and unsuitable for a Dustdigger to lay his trap. Otherwise, it is our little Cait-a-lin, and nothing else, which holds all our concern! Let us ride!"

He spurred his horse forward, leaping into a gallop that even overtook Hank's steed. The others were forced to follow suit, leaving no more time to ponder the dust cloud that had been moving rapidly in their direction or the gruesome fate that the Dustdigger had nearly delivered them.

O.O.O

The time was drawing near. Venger could feel the raw power coalescing as the stars and planets drifted inevitably into place. He could sense the souls of the Dead all around, beating at the tenuous Veil that separated their world from his. And with every passing second, the taste of his imminent victory grew sweeter. In the end, it mattered not if the Desert King and a handful of warriors were with them; his bitter enemies would have no choice but to surrender the Gem of Shahvin to save the child.

With such power at his command, he would pierce the Veil at just the right moment to release only the cruelest, most vindictive spirits of the Dead back into the Realm. At his bidding, these evil souls would fly forth and penetrate where orcs and lizard men had failed to go, into those last bastions of resistance to his ultimate rule of the Realm: Khadish, Tardos Keep, Yarfell, Ballamour Hill, and a few others.

He had decided that Tardos must fall first, and when it did, the spirits would steal the Dragonbane before Queen Solinara could destroy it. Then, empowered with that simple herb that could nonetheless utterly destroy the Dragon Queen herself, he would revel in the pleasure of ensuring that Tiamat would no longer trouble his schemes and dreams. With her gone, Venger would then no longer need the Weapons of Power.

And that would be the sweetest moment of all. At long last, to finally destroy, slowly, horribly, one by one, the Young Ones, four years after he had believed these banes of his existence had escaped his grasp forever.

_Outworlders_, Venger heard Shadow Demon's voice vaguely echo in the back of his mind, and he rolled his red eyes in resignation but finally decided to use the term. It was easy to forget these things about mere mortals, but by human standards, he supposed most of them weren't considered that young any more.

Not that it mattered. In the end, he would destroy the _Outworlders_ and claim the Realm. And best of all, his Master would be very pleased. The thought of his Master's rewards made a sinister smile cross Venger's cold lips as he predicted his success. Such complete victory was enough to even make putting up with this screaming child worth it.

The smile turned into a sneer as he looked down at the child in question. Shadow Demon had released her from the cell, and then conveniently disappeared, when Venger had come to collect her. Two days and nights in a dark dungeon, with only bread and water and the occasional piece of dried meat, had certainly left her pale and scared, but that shrieking defiance had not yet been frightened out of her.

Setting her heels, Caitlin dug in with all her might, forcing Venger to drag her by the arm through the halls of his fortress. It was not easy, for she screamed and fought the whole time. She scratched, she bit, and she generally frustrated Venger so much that he secretly acknowledged to himself that he understood perfectly why Shadow Demon had fled.

"I have not the patience to tolerate your behavior, child!" he finally snapped when she grabbed on to the pedestal of a statue with her free hand and held on for dear life. Catching her around the waist, he plucked her feet off the ground and slung her under his arm like a sack of potatoes. A very upset, kicking, screaming sack of potatoes.

Ignoring Caitlin's struggles, but muttering some colorful phrases about uncooperative human brats, Venger hauled her out the main portcullis, which led to a courtyard open to the blood red sky. There, waiting patiently, was the jet-black Nightmare that served as Venger's personal steed. Floating by the hellish equine was Shadow Demon, trying his best to make it look like he had dutifully gone to fetch the Nightmare for Venger, when in truth he had frankly abandoned his Master to deal with the child himself. His shadowy nerves just couldn't take any more.

"You lemme go!" Caitlin continued to scream, kicking and flailing her little fists wildly. She was taken by surprise when Venger obligingly plopped her back to her feet; she looked around uncertainly, expecting some sort of catch to this sudden cooperation.

"You no longer have cause to scream, child," Venger told her in the most neutral voice he could manage. He did not want her to suspect that she was being used bait to trap her parents and their friends, though he felt more than a little annoyed at having to stoop to such a pathetic ruse. "I am taking you to your parents now."

Caitlin brightened at this news, but upon seeing Venger take a stride towards the Nightmare, she hesitated and regarded the beast with a wary eye. Venger vaguely considered that horses which flew and snorted flames from their nostrils were probably an unfamiliar sight on her world. "Come, child," he commanded, hoping he'd found the right balance of sternness and calm to make her obey without yet another struggle. "It is time to go."

"We gonna ride the horsey?"

"Yes, we are going to ride the ... ARRRRGH! Get ON!" Venger snarled, a hair's-breadth away from losing his patience entirely with the girl. Grabbing her beneath her arms, Venger hoisted Caitlin into the air and dropped her unceremoniously onto the Nightmare's saddle.

Surprised at this outburst, the fiery steed swiveled its massive head to look at Venger quizzically, and Shadow Demon did his best to stifle a snicker, but the Dark Lord noticed neither of them. Instead, he stood glaring at Caitlin, flexing his clawed fists and willing himself to not lose his temper, not now, not when he was so close to the ultimate victory. He couldn't afford to harm this child now, even if he _hadn't_ made that promise to the Ranger. Once he had that Gem, however, then the rules would change. He just had to restrain himself for another hour or two, no matter how that blasted child nettled him.

Caitlin, for her part, folded her arms angrily across her chest, her lower lip sticking out in a sulky pout. "You're mean! I don't like you!" she sniffled at Venger.

"Yes, child, I am aware of that," he growled back at her. "You have made yourself quite clear on that issue already." Heaving a grumbling, dangerous sigh, Venger turned to look at Shadow Demon, who regained his composure and managed to look gravely serious just in the nick of time.

"Shadow Demon," Venger said seriously, though there was a slightly maniacal twitch in his eye as he spoke. "One of the greatest benefits of immortality is the fact that I need never concern myself with raising an heir to continue my legacy."

"Of course, Master, of course!" Shadow Demon agreed wholeheartedly as Venger mounted up on the saddle behind Caitlin, and then the insubstantial servant shuddered visibly. The image of five or six hellions of Venger's bloodline causing continual havoc in the fortress almost visibly flashed before his ghostly eyes, and for not having a stomach, Shadow Demon suddenly looked utterly nauseous.

"It will suit us to arrive in the city first," Venger interrupted his servant's musings, causing the shadowy lackey to start violently back to the present, "and properly greet our adventurers." Turning to look sharply at his spy, the Dark Lord asked, "You are _absolutely certain_ that it was the Khadisian City of the Dead of which they spoke?"

"I am certain, Master," Shadow Demon said. It was probably the eighth or ninth time he'd had to repeat that bit of news since he'd returned from the desert this morning.

"Excellent," Venger said, for probably the eighth or ninth time, and spurred his Nightmare to take to the air. Shadow Demon immediately followed as they flew off in the direction of the City of the Dead. But within seconds, Shadow Demon was noticeably lagging behind. Somehow, for the rest of their flight, he managed to perfectly maintain the exact distance to remain close enough so that Venger could not accuse him of dawdling, but stay just far enough out of earshot so that he didn't have to listen to that piercing scream the child had started the moment the Nightmare's rear hooves had left the ground.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"There! There, my children, do you not see it? Though it may bring a curse just to look upon it as we now do, there before us is the fabled City of the Dead."

For the past ten minutes, the horses had steadily climbed a gentle incline and had just now crested the low, rolling hill of sand. The trek down the other side appeared to be a bit steeper, but nothing the steeds could not manage. From this vantage point at the top of the dune, where they all now reined their horses to a halt, the desperate adventurers at last looked upon the crumbling, ghostly remains of a once-great desert city.

Maintaining a brisk pace across the desert, they had made good time to reach this point. There had been no further encounters with Dustdiggers or other creatures of the desert, though some sort of small, wild desert animal that Rahmoud had called a 'Llok' had been occasionally sighted in the distance, fleeing from their approach.

While it was now obvious that the caravan or whatever it might be was following them, the speed with which the group traveled had kept their pursuers from closing the miles. At one point, Bhujar reasoned that it doubtlessly was not Venger, since he had more magical means of arriving at their destination, and if it was his army, then judging from their distance, they would likely arrive too late to be of any threat.

Though no one was reassured by the sage's words, eventually, the telltale cloud of dust and sand behind them had become little more than a minor worry in the backs of their minds. And now that their goal was suddenly so close before them, the concern of being overtaken was almost completely forgotten.

"If the fickle desert does not deceive these old eyes," Rahmoud continued as the others gazed at the city and murmured amongst themselves, "then it appears that no more than one league separates ourselves from those fallen walls." When they had halted, someone had produced a skin filled with water from the oasis that morning, and each person took a sip before passing it on to the next. Quickly quenching his thirst, Rahmoud made a visual judgment, estimating, "Thirty minutes, no more, and we shall have arrived, my children. Our little Cait-a-lin is very nearly within our arms once more."

Beside his king, the sage Bhujar unwrapped a small, brass telescope from a bag sashed to his waist to better view their destination. "Yes," he said in his heavily accented but musical Common, scrutinizing the landscape carefully. "League. One league. Thirty minutes. Yes." Nodding his head, he offered the instrument to his King, and pondered the sweeping view thoughtfully. Then, closing his eyes, he moved his lips silently, reciting phrases to himself from some arcane memory. "Hold great respect," he finally told the group. "This is now where we tread in footsteps of Hadarif the Steadfast. Yes, must tread with much respect for the Dead."

"Look, let's be a little more concerned about the living for the moment, okay?" Hank countered with his signature bluntness.

Bhujar and several other Khadisians who understood Common looked scandalized at Hank's comment, as if what he had just suggested was tantamount to going out after a bout of heavy drinking and urinating on hallowed graves. But they dared not make a protest, for to their surprise, their King had quickly agreed with his adopted son and did not seem to care how sacrilegious the comment might have been.

"Yes, my son, for now the Living are alive, and the Dead shall remain dead," Rahmoud agreed with a rather pointed look at some of his warriors who had gasped at the remark. Like all good Khadisians, even their King held fast to their firm beliefs about the Dead, but the fear and reverence behind those superstitions was now completely overridden by his concern for Caitlin's life and overwhelming desire to see Venger regret his actions. Snapping the telescope shut, he handed it back to his sage and continued, "And if we are successful this evening, then this truth shall continue to be so."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Diana asked pointedly as she studied the position of the suns in the late afternoon sky. They were cutting it close as it was; they had no time to tarry and admire the view. And complicating matters was the realization, earlier in the day, that when Venger had told them they had until the setting of the suns, he hadn't specified whether that meant the first sun to set, or the last. There was at least half an hour's difference between the two.

"We're not waiting for anything," Hank answered her, urging his horse down the slope of the dune. "Let's go."

**O.O.O**

"Gee, talk about ambiance," Eric said sarcastically half an hour later, when at last the group's horses strode past piles of stony rubble that were once the city's walls. Time and the desert winds had taken their toll, for very few of the monolithic stones remained standing. Long ago, before the rise of Khadish as the cultural and economic center of the desert, these once-powerful walls cracked and fell, and over the centuries the sandy winds scoured away most of their features. Within their vast, shattered ring lay bleached and crumbling husks that at one time were the dwellings and shops that comprised this now-deceased city.

"So where's Venger?" Sheila asked. From long experience, they'd all been expecting - or perhaps it was more accurate to say _hoping_ - that their nemesis would meet them with a magical display of firepower as they entered the city, rather than forcing them to play a desperate game of Hide-and-Seek with her daughter's life as the prize. Unfortunately, the place lived up to its name as the City of the Dead, because except for a few annoying flies that buzzed around their ears, no other living thing could be seen. The creatures and plants of the desert had shunned this place long ago, and even now, the normally obedient horses seemed reluctant to continue on.

"Well, maybe he's waiting for us at the Veil thing," Diana suggested. "Maybe he's already found the weak spot." Shading her eyes, she scanned up and down the streets of ruined, partially-buried buildings, blindly trying to guess which one housed their goal. Sheila had studied the Gem upon their arrival, and to everyone's dismay, said that it had so blackened that she couldn't make the telltale smoke trail out any more, not even by holding it up to her eye and facing one of the suns. As Bhujar had explained, the Gem's utter darkness was due to the simple fact that they were so close to the Veil now. Whatever the reason, in these last few hundred yards of their journey, they were now left without an effective guide.

Or perhaps not. Terri spoke up then, as she very carefully and very nervously stood in the stirrups to get a better look around. "Look for a big building," she said, her voice taking on that familiar, far-off tone as she sought out the dream images the night had provided her. "Probably the biggest building around here. I guess it was like a palace, or a town hall or something, or ... maybe … I don't know, a mansion?"

"Okay, Rahmoud," Eric asked, "where would something like that be?"

"This I cannot say for certain," Rahmoud admitted reluctantly. "As in my own Khadish, cities are often built around palaces, therefore a palace would be at the heart of these sad ruins. But those who would live in the luxury of a mansion would also crave to be far from the crowded bustle, and will oft reside instead at the very edges of a city."

"In other words, you don't really know either," Hank stated neutrally, sighing as he looked around. Well, what had they been expecting, a big sign that read, 'Come See The Veil Of The Dead Here'?

"My son, I cannot guide us further," Rahmoud replied, with a shake of his turbaned head. "These old eyes have never before beheld the City of the Dead, nor have any of these brave men who ride with us. I know little more of the City than the legends that surround it."

"Uh, guys," Terri said quietly, waving her hand in the air for attention.

"Okay, then," Hank said, not hearing Terri. All that concerned him now was finding his daughter as quickly as possible, getting her away before Venger could make good on the horrible threats that had been eating at him constantly. The sound of his little girl's scream as Venger teleported her away still haunted his thoughts; he had not slept well these past two nights because that terrified cry still echoed in his ears every time he closed his eyes. Raking his fingers through his hair, he considered their options a moment before slipping back into the leadership role that Rahmoud was quietly relinquishing. "We'd better fan out. Let's have four groups, with four or five to a group, and each group goes in a different direction."

"Guys?" Terri said a little more loudly.

"Everybody stick with your group and look for the biggest buildings you can see," the Ranger continued with unquestionable authority. "Ignore the little houses and shops, that's not what we're looking for."

"GUYS!" Terri finally yelled to get everyone's attention.

Perhaps she shouldn't have yelled so loud, because the end result was about a dozen weapons whipped out by their jumpy owners, each pointing their scimitar or bow or whatever else they had in several directions at once. Immediate defensive positions prepared for anything from an attack by Venger, to an assault from the supposed caravan that had been following them, to an invasion of the Walking Dead that Rahmoud had warned them about.

"Well ... what is it?" an edgy Presto finally asked after a tense moment passed, in which absolutely nothing happened. The only sounds were the crackles of charged and ready Weapons of Power, and the horses stamping and snorting in response to the heightened tension in the air. Presto's hand was in his glowing Hat, and judging by his expression, he had hold of something in there that was probably nothing short of a Howitzer. "What did you see?"

"Sorry, guys, but ... it's _that_ way," she said, pointing down the road to the group's left, while biting back an inappropriate smile. "We don't have to split up to find it. Maybe you guys don't know where this place is, but I do. Now that I think about it, I see some things down that way that sort of look familiar from my dream. We need to go this way." Giving the reins a gentle tug, she turned her horse with a new-found level of skill that she hadn't shown just the day before. She'd learned so quickly how to ride out of old-fashioned necessity, though she still had balance troubles if her steed moved unexpectedly. But being a fairly even-tempered animal, the horse, snorting once as if to say that he really did not want to go deeper into the city, responded gently to her signal to start trotting down the street. She even appeared confident enough to take one hand off the reins and gesture for everyone to follow her lead.

The crumbling, ancient walls standing askew along their path cast long, dark shadows as the suns edged ever closer to the horizon, lending even more eeriness to the haunted atmosphere of a ghost town that, in Khadisian belief, was an ill omen just to look upon. An uneasy sensation passed through the group as they rode, as if the shadows themselves were alive and watching their every move. Some of them shrugged the feeling off, chalking their nervousness up to the stories Rahmoud had put in their heads about the Walking Dead. Some, not so willing to dismiss intuition or superstition, quietly made some sign asking for divine protection. Still others hunkered down in their saddles and took a more secular approach by getting their weapons ready for anything as they followed Terri's lead.

Though one rider or another often thought to look behind, no one saw evidence that the feeling was more correct than they realized: the shadows were indeed alive and watching them. Pale white eyes glowed for a moment, tracking the horses, and then there was little more than the movement of darkness within darkness as Shadow Demon hurried to tell his Master that the Gem, the Outworlders, and the Desert King had at last arrived.

O.O.O

"This is it?" Sheila asked about five minutes later, when Terri reined her horse to a halt before the crumbling, time-bleached facade of what must have been the most opulent and magnificent building of the desert in its day. But in the end, unheeding time ravaged its beauty just as thoroughly as it wore down its plainer neighbors. Only the faintest traces of tarnished gold-leaf and weathered enamels hinted at the former glory of these sad, deteriorating walls. Long ago, the window panes had cracked and shattered, eventually eroding back into the sand from which they were originally glazed. The only surviving remnant of the building's previous grandeur was the regal staircase leading up to it. Though smoothed by ages of gritty wind and half-buried by drifting sand, the bluish-green tinge of carved marble was unmistakable.

"Yeah, this is it," Terri agreed slowly. Clearly, she was only half-listening as she stared into the jagged, gaping hole that was once a towering double-doorway. The thinnest point of the Veil was in there, or at least it would be in less than an hour, when the planets aligned. She could almost picture it in her mind now, a hazy white sheen somewhere in the dark building, and behind that, indefinite silhouettes clawing desperately to escape through the light. That would be when Caitlin should hold the Gem ... but how? How were they supposed to get her away from Venger and keep him from getting his hands on the Gem at the same time?

Deciding to give it one more try, Terri closed her eyes, trying to do what she had done in the amusement park: recapture the scene in her dream and place herself within it, so she could expand the vision and have more active control over what images she could focus on. Centering herself, she let out a calming breath and focused on what images she could remember. There ... there it was ... she could see Venger ... he had Caitlin … and Terri felt herself falling …

**O.O.O**

Studying the situation from a more physical approach than Terri, Presto asked, "You think Venger's in there waiting for us already?"

"Well, if he is," Eric retorted, "he didn't take the front door."

"Oh?" Presto frowned. "What makes you say that?"

"Simple, dummy. Look. The sand on the steps hasn't been disturbed," Eric retorted, unquestionably proud of his simple observation, or at least proud of the fact that he'd called it before anyone else. "Nobody's walked up those in a long time." But the smugness quickly faded, replaced by a grim and deadly serious determination that, until the events of these past few days, was a rare thing to see on the Cavalier's features. "But whether he took the front door or the back, or even if he came in through that huge hole in the roof, it doesn't matter. I hope your Hat's in top working order, because Venger's going to be waiting and Caitlin is counting on us."

"Yeah, and that's something I don't get," Diana interrupted. Something about this whole situation had been bugging her since they'd found out what Venger wanted, but she hadn't quite been able to figure out what. In an odd way, Eric's comment finally helped her put her finger on it. "Venger's been acting really weird this time. Or not acting – like you said, he's pretty much been doing nothing but waiting for us. Think about it. He tells us we have two days to bring him the Gem, but he doesn't even tell us where we have to go to meet him, he just tells us to show up. And then he leaves us alone. Doesn't even try to attack us, unless maybe that Dustdigger thing was something he conjured up?" She glanced at Rahmoud, but the King's only reply was to shake his head in the negative. "Do you think ol' Horn Head is slipping or something? We've got something he wants, so why isn't he trying to roast our butts until he gets it? This whole, 'See you in two days, I'm outta here!' routine just isn't like him."

"The Dark Lord has undergone no great changes in the years of your absence, my children," Rahmoud explained to them. "Save perhaps to become even more vile and evil in the wake of your escape from his clutches. But something else you say piques these old ears. How strange I find it that the Dark Lord himself did not direct you to meet him anywhere at all, least of all here, at the weakest point of the Veil."

"No, he just gave us a deadline," Eric explained. "Mostly we've just been following the Gem, but in a way, you can blame Dungeon Drip. Or at least, sort of. We didn't have a clue until he managed to remind us of that Prophecy in his usual bass-ackwards way."

"Maybe bass-ackwards for _you_," Diana shot back. "You just memorized the words, and left it to the rest of us to figure it out-"

"That son of a- aaargh!" Hank suddenly exploded, cutting a surprised Diana off in mid-word. "He tricked us again!"

All eyes turned to the Ranger, who was muttering angrily to himself and suddenly looked like he wanted to get his hands on something breakable. "Who?" Eric asked him when further explanation was not forthcoming. "What, Super Shrimp tricked us or something? How?"

"No," Hank sighed, taking a few seconds to visibly get a grip on his anger. "Not Dungeon Master. Venger. Like Diana just said: He didn't tell us where the Veil was, and it's not like him to just leave us alone while we try to figure it out. Not unless that was exactly what he wanted."

"Meaning ..." Presto gaped and then slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand as the realization sank in. "Aw, no!"

"You're saying," Diana said slowly, seeing the whole thing clearly in hindsight, "that all along, Venger didn't know where it was either? And he's been tracking us all this time?"

"You got it. We just led him right to it," Hank concluded in frustration, looking back towards the southeast. If whatever had been following them earlier this afternoon was still out there, all traces of its progress were blocked from view by the broken, deteriorating ruins around them, but gut instinct told them all that whoever - or _whatever _- it was, they were still out there.

"Terrific ..." Rob muttered.

"Well, if Venger's coming, he'd better have brought Caitlin!" Sheila exclaimed. I don't care what we have to do, I want my little girl back!"

"Take care what you say, my child," Rahmoud told her quietly. "I too crave nothing more than the safe return of our little Cait-a-lin. But under no circumstances should the Gem fall into Venger's evil hands. This we must ensure."

Sheila looked at Rahmoud as if he'd just betrayed every ounce of trust she'd ever placed in the Desert King. "How can you say that? You want me to just forget all about Caitlin's life? Well, forget _you_! I don't want Venger to come out on top any more than you do, but you heard what he said he's going to do to Caitlin if we don't give him the Gem!"

Rahmoud walked his horse to the shady side of a half-standing building across the ancient street as Sheila spoke, and his men followed suit as he dismounted there, leaving their steeds in relatively cool shelter while they entered the faded, decrepit palace on foot. "And if we simply give him the Gem of Shahvin, my child, we will have our little Cait-a-lin back, but only for a brief while. Once the Dark Lord reaches across the worlds and opens the Veil, there will be no place safe in this Realm. Nowhere to hide, and you are keenly aware that Venger craves your destruction above all others, save perhaps the mighty Dragon Queen Tiamat, or the great Dungeon Master."

As he spoke, for a brief moment, those who looked at Rahmoud might have thought he had aged suddenly. His shoulders stooped and his head bowed, as if the weight of the truth was at last bearing down on him: With the undead spirits of evil at his command, Venger would take great pleasure in destroying the ever-defiant Khadish and her insubordinate king. And with such evil in Venger's power as he aimed to release, there would be no stopping him. All Rahmoud's beloved people could do would be to helplessly bear witness to Khadish's complete annihilation at Venger's uncaring whim.

But then he straightened proudly. What he feared had not yet come to pass, and in this, there was hope. "And so, the Dark Lord must never have it. The Realm could not survive, my children. None of us could if Venger were to possess the power released by the Tear of Stone."

Sheila exploded. "So, what are you saying?" she yelled. Hopping off her horse, she advanced angrily on Rahmoud, who, despite Sheila's shouting and finger-pointing, stood placidly under the verbal assault. On the other hand, a few of his warriors reached uncertainly for their scimitars, caught in an untenable dilemma of possibly having to defend their King from a woman he claimed as his daughter. "I'm supposed to let Venger feed my baby to the orcs, and you're telling me that I'm supposed to feel good about that because it means we didn't let him win?"

"Whoa, Sis, take it easy!" came Rob's voice as he jumped off his horse in an attempt to intervene. In an unusual juxtaposition, for once he was the one trying to calm his sister, rather than the normal other way around. Physically placing himself between Sheila and Rahmoud, he reasoned, "That's not what he's saying at all! He's saying that we need to think of a way to get Caitlin back _without_ giving Venger the Gem. Right, Rahmoud?" Rob asked in a tone that was half-hopeful, half-warning as he glanced over his shoulder at their adopted father.

"Yes, forgive your old Rahmoud," the King said humbly. "I would die a thousand deaths, each more horrible than the last, rather than allow any harm to befall my precious Cait-a-lin. But the situation, I fear is ... how do you say, 'damned if we do, and damned if we do not?' But come, the day wanes, leaving little time for conversation. We must search out this faded palace." Rahmoud switched languages then, speaking in Khadisian to Masrur, one of his soldiers. He spoke too quickly for any of the Earth-born to understand, since they had lost most of their Khadisian in the past four years. But it seemed like he'd instructed Masrur to stay and guard the horses, for as they moved towards those cracked and pocked marble steps, that soldier remained in the shade, watching the steeds as they snuffled at the sandy ground and rested after their long journey.

"You see, Sis?" Rob asked, trying to sound hopeful for everyone's sake, including his own. "We'll think of something, I know we will. And Terri's sure we'll think of something too, right, Terr?"

"Yeah, we will," the Dreamer answered with as much confidence as she could muster. But then she felt compelled to add, with no pretense but definitely under her breath, "Like I know _what_."

"Guys, we're wasting time!" The voice was Diana's, shouted over her shoulder as she crossed the wide avenue to the marble stairs. Hank was already halfway up those steps; he'd had enough and wasn't about to wait around for the argument to be settled. "Horn Head's not going to put up with us dawdling like this!"

"Oh, no you don't!" Eric called as he sprinted after her, leaving a very surprised Presto suddenly having to scramble to catch up with him. "You guys aren't getting Venger all to yourselves! The old Cavalier wants a piece of him too, for everything he's put us through!"

One after another, the Outworlders and their Khadisian friends quickly disappeared into the gaping entrance of the dark, derelict palace, leaving the avenue once again silent and deserted, save for a single desert warrior who watched the southeast with edgy anticipation as he guarded the horses.

**O.O.O**

Once inside, Hank drew an arrow, its golden glow illuminating what appeared to be a vast, dusty foyer. Around them, dried-out skeletons of once-opulent furniture lay in crumbling splinters, and tattered shreds of exquisite, hand-woven tapestries hung limply from the walls like long-abandoned cobwebs. Ominous, ghostly shadows loomed and lurked just beyond the circle of light cast by the Bow.

The haunted effect was unsettling to Khadisian and Outworlder alike. Bhujar produced a large ruby from his bag of magical items, and said an arcane phrase over it that caused it to glow and provide more light. Its color only served to cast the shadows a disconcerting shade of blood-red. Hastily, he stuffed the ruby back in his pouch and quickly said a few words of apology to the spirits of the Dead that might be watching.

"Gee, whoever these guys were, they must have left in a hurry," Eric commented, trying to fill the creepy silence with the comforting sound of a human voice. He studied the shards of what was once a fine piece of intricately enameled and gold-leafed pottery, probably worth a fortune in its day. It had been abandoned to crumble into the sands of Time along with everything else in this ancient city. "They didn't take the time to pack anything up, they just left."

"Yes, perhaps," Rahmoud agreed slowly, and it was clear by the way that he gripped his Scimitar that even he was growing unsettled by the eeriness of the place. "If, indeed, these unfortunate people left at all."

Eric shuddered at that, and backed away from the pottery as quickly as he could without making it look like he was hurrying away from it. Though he wasn't quite sure what was bothering him, it suddenly felt highly appropriate to leave the artifacts of a dead civilization in peace. Yes, it was entirely possible that some horrible, natural disaster came along and wiped out the entire city in one fell swoop. But the way Rahmoud said it, Eric was sure the King believed it was a very _un_-natural disaster which brought about this civilization's demise.

"Come on, guys," Hank said, peering into the darkness past the glow of his arrow at the many arched and darkened doorways. It was anyone's guess which they were supposed to take next. "Caitlin's-"

"What was that?!" Diana suddenly interrupted, dropping into a startled half-crouch with her feet planted firmly on the ground and Staff extended to fight. Her head swiveled back and forth as she quickly searched for something that wasn't quite visible.

Unfortunately, no one else had any idea what it was she had noticed.

"What was what?" Presto asked nervously, his Hat off his head and already glowing violet with power. "Is it another Dustdigger thingamajiggy?"

"I don't know ..." the Acrobat replied. "Maybe … I thought I felt the floor vibrate."

"Yes, yes!" one of Rahmoud's warriors, a tall and scarred man by the name of Yaphet, exclaimed when Diana explained what she had felt. Pointing at the worn, marble floor, he said, "I too was feeling this, also!"

Warily, Hank pointed his Bow at the floor. Though he hadn't felt the slight movement that Diana had, he asked, "Rahmoud, what do you think? Is it another Dustdigger like Presto said?"

"What makes the floor here shiver beneath our feet can be no Dustdigger," Rahmoud answered, but he stopped abruptly when this time, everyone felt a small shake. After a moment, the vibration ceased, so he continued warily, "Those foul creatures bury themselves in loose sand where a hapless animal or wanderer might tread, my son. Never would they conceal themselves beneath the hard foundation of construction such as this, for Dusdiggers are relatively weak and cannot quickly break through the surface to ensnare their prey with the element of surprise."

"So, what, an earthquake, maybe?" Hank suggested. "Are we having some tremors or something?"

A violent explosion of flying rubble bursting from the floor answered Hank's question. Most of them were thrown off their feet, and those who weren't dove for cover of their own accord. One of the Khadisian warriors fell howling to the ground with a deep, bloody gash in his leg from the teeth of the vile creature that had burst through the floor.

The most accurate description was to call it a ten-foot long slug with the mouth of a shark. Its mottled brown body, covered in slime, exuded a stench not unlike a bait shop on a hot afternoon in July. Lunging about, it gnashed its dagger-like teeth as it extracted its long, disgusting body from the ground. It had no discernable eyes or ears, but as it oozed rapidly out of its tunnel, it somehow knew to lunge and snap savagely when three swordsmen quickly overcame their surprise and tried for an attack to drive it back. Fortunately, human feet were fleet, and its gnashing fangs missed its attackers, though by bare inches. The abomination made a horrible, gurgling hiss when it failed to connect with its prey.

"Eeeeeeeeuuuuch!" Eric screeched when he mustered the courage to look up and catch sight of the creature that had thrown him to the floor. "Omigod, it's Cujo the Slug!" he babbled. "_Tremors_ is right! Where's Kevin Bacon when you need him?"

"Stop comparing everything to a movie and help us fight the damned thing!" Diana snapped at the Cavalier as she landed lightly on her feet after a backwards handspring which helped her avoid the monster that was trying to make a meal of her. In one seamless motion, the slimy horror then whipped its head around to bite at the warrior named Jhali'ad, who had tried to approach with his scimitar from behind. The monster's oddly informed movements clued the Acrobat to take a hint from the movie that Eric compared the thing to, even though she would never admit to having watched such a silly flick. Risking a moment to stand up, she shouted, "Stay back and don't move if you can help it! It can feel you moving around! That's how it knows where you are!"

"Crossbows, then!" Hank shouted as he fired on the creature, and Rahmoud was just as rapidly shouting a translation for his men who did not speak Common. "Or anything you can throw! Try to drive it back without moving your feet!"

"Look out! Here comes another one!" Sheila suddenly shrieked over the hisses of the creature and the twangs of crossbow bolts slicing through the air. She, Presto, and Terri, who had been standing next to each other, all dove in different directions just as the floor beneath them erupted. Another slimy, snapping maw of teeth gnashed savagely in the air where they had been, then hissed its frustration when it realized its prey had escaped.

"These are not creatures of the desert!" Rahmoud shouted over the din, as now a third creature burst through the faded tile floor. Though his archers' bolts were mostly bouncing off the leathery hides, they were encouraged to see that the monstrosities reacted violently to the flaming arrows that Hank was letting loose on them. If the Energy Bow could weaken the things enough, then the rest of them could move in for a kill. "I know not what they might be, but such moist bodies do not bespeak of the arid sands!"

"Whatever they are, they're starting to block our ways out!" Diana pointed out, as the floor split violently and two more of the things suddenly burst through; one between them and the entryway, and another in front of a hallway that they had not had the chance to investigate yet.

There were now too many of the creatures for their small group to effectively fight.

"Heads up!" Eric suddenly shouted, having overcome his initial bout of being grossed out. With his Shield raised, he charged past Diana just as the floor beside her shattered with the force of another creature breaking through. Debris which would have fatally hit the Acrobat bounced off his Shield instead, and when the creature surged up from its tunnel, its mucousy hiss turned into a squeal of pain when it lurched squarely into Eric's force field. The blow staggered the Cavalier, but he remained upright and even found the gumption to shoot Diana a cocky grin. "Who needs Kevin Bacon, huh?" he asked smugly.

"Nah, not us, we've got plenty of ham right here!" Diana shot back, though she owed the Cavalier big time for the save. The creature that probably would have devoured her was now lying in a slimy, unconscious heap at his feet.

Rahmoud leaped over several piles of rubble to join the men wielding crossbows. "Aha!" he shouted at the slug-thing they were firing on. "Never let it be said that Rahmoud's warriors will fight when he will not!" Striking his broad Scimitar on the ground, he blasted the creature squarely in its grotesque non-face with high-frequency sound waves. The beast reared back in confusion, flailing its head desperately. Struck deaf, unable to locate its attackers, it instead turned blindly towards its tunnel to flee the intense vibration. The men cheered at its sudden departure even as they continued to shower it with crossbow bolts.

"Look out!" Rob shouted before that one had completely disappeared. "Another one's coming up!"

Rather than running away from the telltale tremors beneath his feet, Rob stood his ground, Club raised high above his head. Not moving, he watched the floor for just a moment until he saw the first crack in the marble tiles. Then, with a wild shout, he brought his Weapon smashing down between his feet with all the strength he could manage.

The force of the blow knocked even Rob off his feet, but his gamble had worked better than could have been imagined. The creature never came up through the floor. From somewhere beneath the tiles came a pained squeal, and judging by the vibrations, the thing was tunneling away as fast as it possibly could. But even better was the fact that the shock of the blow spread out through the floor, sending the other creatures into complete confusion. Finishing what Rahmoud had started with the power of his Scimitar, Rob's blow had overpowered their fine-tuned senses which could locate their intended prey by feel alone. Several scimitar-wielding warriors were able to rush up and hack at the sensory-deprived beasts' tough, leathery hides without fear.

"Sheila! Terri! Everyone, move it!" Hank shouted, standing near an archway that led to a room which seemed to have outside light streaming into it. "This way! Now's our chance to get past those things!"

In agreement that it was more important to find Venger and Caitlin, Rahmoud gave a Khadisian desist-and-retreat order to the men who were trying to break through the creatures' incredibly thick skin.

Before the monsters could recover and follow, Hank pointed to his Bow and shouted at Presto, "Those things don't like heat! See if you can whip up a flamethrower or something!"

"Already on it!" Presto answered, and in fact he was ready to start an incantation over his Hat when Hank had called to him. The others, some carrying their injured comrades, ran past him towards the next room that the Ranger was gesturing them into. Just as the last of them made it through the archway, there was a great flash of light and a deafening thunderclap from Presto's Hat. In that second, torrential rains started pouring inside the foyer.

"What the - I asked for fire, and you conjure up rain?" Hank asked in surprise as a quickly-soaked Presto splashed past him.

"Well, yeah, it's not fire, not by a long shot," Presto grinned, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the slug creatures, which had started to writhe and squeal the moment the rains touched them. As they slithered painfully down their tunnels and disappeared, the Wizard explained, "And no, my Hat's not on the fritz again. It's raining, all right. But, see, it's raining_ salt water_."

Hank, surprised but impressed, caught a few drops of water and tasted them, just to be sure. The rain was at least ten times as salty as the ocean. "Slugs. Salt. I get it," he almost smiled as they ducked out of the raining room and followed the others. "Okay, let's figure out where we are. We've got to find this Veil thing fast."

"Um ... Hank?" Presto interrupted, pointing into a corner of the lighted room that everyone had gathered in. "Maybe you spoke a little too soon there. I think they already _did_ find it."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

If all the world was truly a stage, and the men and women merely players, then at last the curtain that fell on the final act had been found. There were few other words to describe the otherworldly aura of what hung in the air at the far end of the massive, faded room. A sheen of misty white light rippled and flickered as if blown by a faint breeze, or as if disturbed by the vague, dark shapes that moved behind it. Sheila found herself wondering if they could see her in the same way that she could see them, and fervently hoped she would never find out the answer.

Sheila, Eric, and the others were gathered in silent awe around it, wondering at the visual phenomenon. Like a curtain hanging from the proscenium in a theater, it held behind it the anticipation of something that for now, remained unseen. There was no discernable source creating the shadowed light, for although a huge hole gaped in the once-opulent roof of this great hall, the beam of waning suns-light that slanted through the dusty air struck high on the wall at the opposite end of the room. Rahmoud and his men maintained a wary distance from these first visible shimmerings of the Veil. Some even refused to look directly upon it, and Bhujar was busy making a series of arcane signs of protection with all the haste he could muster.

On the other hand, Shelia and the rest inspected it closely, approaching it with curiosity vastly different from the deeply-ingrained Khadisian viewpoint of respectful dread. The Veil hung freely in the air, not connected to or touching anything around it. Nor was it disrupted by the presence of the Living, for Eric and Diana stood on one side of it, and Sheila on the other, while Rob and Terri circled it completely, getting a view of it from all directions.

"It's bigger," the Dreamer said abstractedly. "No ... I mean, it's going to get bigger. There's still a little time before it opens all the way. But not much."

"Are we sure this is it?" Presto asked, approaching the ethereal phenomenon in awe. "This isn't what I pictured at all. I mean, I mean, I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting, but somehow I was thinking the gateway between two worlds was gonna be more like a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of thing."

"It's gotta be it," Sheila answered. She held the Gem of Shahvin up for the others to see, hardly believing that this was the same brilliantly clear diamond that Rahmoud had given her four years ago. In its nearness to the Veil that had wept it, the Gem had grown so glossy black and opaque that it might as well have been carved from a highly polished block of obsidian.

"Great, so we're here," Eric shrugged, never taking his eyes off the dark, ghostly shapes that drifted in the misty light. "So now we just wait for Venger to play catch-up, and-"

"MOMMYYYYYY!"

**O.O.O**

The emerging Veil was instantly forgotten, and in one second, every Weapon in the room was trained on the dark, dusty corner of the room from which the little girl's scream had come from.

Venger's glowing red eyes and mocking laugh greeted them from the shadows. How long he had been there, watching, preparing to strike, was anyone's guess. Gazing disdainfully at the Weapons aimed at him as if they held no more fear for him than the bite of a flea, he stepped into the light with regal haughtiness, his massive wings draped around his shoulders like an elegant black cape. Shadow Demon hovered about his shoulders, ever-present to absorb the reflected glory in this ultimate success.

Venger, however, paid no attention to his obsequious lackey, and all but ignored the struggling, crying child that he dragged along beside him, his clawed fingers clamped around her arm in an unbreakable grip. The only thought he gave her was fleeting and twofold: That perhaps he had released her from the soundproof bubble just a bit prematurely, and that he ought to have thought of employing that simple silencing spell days ago. But it mattered little now. "I see that you managed to survive my 'welcoming committee'," he smiled smoothly, referring to the monsters that had nearly devoured them in the foyer. His comment confirmed Rahmoud's earlier assessment: the slug-things were not creatures of the desert, instead they had been magically summoned here to do Venger's bidding. "It would seem that you want this child desperately, does it not?"

"Venger, let her go!" Sheila shrieked, overwhelming relief at seeing her daughter alive warring with the overpowering desire to rip Venger's throat out. When Venger only laughed at her demand, Rob actually had to hold his sister back to keep her from lunging bare-handed at the Force of Evil.

"Katie, it's going to be all right," Hank called to his daughter, though his eyes never left Venger, and his fingers itched to let fly the arrow he had drawn the second he had heard her cry. "Did he hurt you?"

"He's mean!" Caitlin yelled, letting loose with a kick that might have done damage to Venger's Achilles' heel, had he not had the foresight to wear his high boots to protect him from the blow.

Again, Venger laughed that cold, confident laugh, unruffled by the kick. "I return your child to you unharmed, Ranger," he said, glancing down at Caitlin with mild disgust. "Unharmed, and none the less for spirit, as you can tell." Then his crimson eyes rose and his gaze came to rest on the Gem in Sheila's hand. The Thief looked down at it and gasped, as if she'd forgotten that she'd had it right out in plain sight this whole time. Smiling dangerously, Venger continued smoothly, "And you have wisely brought me the Gem of Shahvin in exchange for her life."

"It will be wiser of you to let the child go free, Dark One!" The challenge came from Rahmoud, who stood at the apex of a semicircle of drawn scimitars, all aimed at Venger's black heart. "We are as one, and you cannot stand against us all together!"

"Perhaps, and perhaps not, King of the barren sand," Venger replied coolly, though his hatred of this defiant mortal man was obvious in his undertone. He still had time to change his plans; perhaps Khadish, and not Tardos, would be the first to fall after all. "Though I could easily burn this child to cinders long before even the quickest of you could entertain a thought of stopping me."

There was a dead silence, broken only by Caitlin's sniffles, as minds raced for a clue what to do next. For the moment it was an impasse, but as long as Venger had Caitlin, unquestionably, he had the upper hand. "The time approaches," he said, glancing to the back of the room where the shimmering Veil hung. In the moments this exchange had taken, the curtain of light had drawn itself wider and taller, and the milky whiteness of it had thinned substantially, allowing an almost clear view into the realm of the Dead. The shadowy shapes within clearly outlined themselves as humanoid, though their faces and bodies bore no discernible features. The pale gleam of white light, thinner and more sheer than gauze, was the only thing that kept these nightmarish shadows from fully entering the room and the world of the Living. "Hand over the Gem, Thief. Now."

**O.O.O**

Near the back of the group facing off against Venger, Eric stood with his Shield positioned in front of the Veil as if it might do some slight bit of good to keep Venger blocked from it, whether he was in possession of the Gem or not. Whispering to Presto, who stood beside him to create a last line of defense, if needed, he asked, "Um, remind me again what the plan is?"

"We didn't have time to come up with one, remember?" Presto answered softly out of the corner of his mouth.

"That's what I was afraid you'd say," Eric sighed. "Looks like we're winging it, huh?"

"Well, yeah," Presto agreed, watching Venger nervously as he demanded the Gem from Sheila. The years they'd spent back on Earth had done nothing to change Venger's ability to intimidate the Wizard merely by being in the same room with him. This time, though, the stakes were too high to just back down now. Presto would never concede to it out loud, but as much it had upset Sheila, Rahmoud was right. Simply trading Caitlin's life for the Gem would only buy them a short time of her safety before they, and the entire Realm, would all suffer the fate that Venger's evil souls would mete out the moment he released them. So what the heck were they supposed to do?

A desperate idea struck Presto then. "Look, maybe we don't have to _stop_ him," he whispered to Eric, fervently hoping that Venger was too preoccupied with the others to be listening to him. "All we have to do is stall him, right? Bhujar said it's a pretty specific time when the Veil thins enough to reach through it, right? So if he trades the Gem for Caitlin, and we can just stall him for like one minute, then he'll miss his chance, right?"

"Let's hope he doesn't even get his hands on the Gem in the first place, then we won't have to worry about it," Eric whispered back. But his hopes of that began to sink when he listened incredulously to the next words that Hank had to say.

**O.O.O**

"Okay, Venger, you win," the Ranger said slowly, though still holding his drawn arrow aimed at Venger's chest. "I just want my little girl back. How do you want to do this?"

Diana, who had been holding her Staff like a bo and was poised to spring in any direction, stared at Hank in shock. Even Rahmoud seemed surprised to hear this, and appeared to be wondering if Hank had either taken leave of his senses or just given up and surrendered.

The laugh that Venger gave was wicked and mocking, as if this was exactly what he had expected. "There, you see, child?" Venger sneered, looking down at Caitlin and laughing. "Did I not tell you that your father would break like a twig so long as I held you?"

Hank ground his teeth as he held the arrow ready, silently cursing Venger and whatever he had been telling Caitlin these past two days. It must have been all the details of that horrible time he and Bobby had been captured. But Caitlin herself didn't quite seem to understand what Venger was saying. She gave her daddy a long stare as if to make sure he was still in one piece and hadn't broken in two like Venger had implied. Then, surprisingly, she glared up at her captor with big, teary eyes, sniffled once, and shouted, "You shut up!"

Venger came very close to gaping in surprise at the backtalk. Recovering quickly, he shook her arm and snarled, "If you are wise, you will heed your own advice, child!"

"Caitlin, don't make him mad!" Sheila called out frantically. The Veil had grown rapidly as they spoke, stretching almost floor to ceiling and reaching halfway across the room, and Venger would have little reason and little time to tolerate the girl's stubbornness now. "Just be a good girl and do what he says, okay, Sweetheart?" she continued to call to her daughter, trying to keep Caitlin calm even though her own voice was edging nearer to cracking in panic. "Don't be sassy, he's not someone you want to make angry."

"Well spoken, Thief," Shadow Demon hissed coldly. "My Master is indeed _not_ someone you should risk angering."

Venger gave the irritating little toady a withering look. Then glancing at the extent to which the Veil had grown, he glowered derisively at the feeble attempts of the Cavalier and the Magician to stand between him and the souls that would willingly do his bidding in exchange for their liberation from the sunless lands. "As for how I want to do this, Ranger, it is quite simple," he continued. "You will put down your Weapons and the Thief will bring me the Gem."

Behind the Veil, or perhaps within it, dozens, maybe hundreds of the featureless, human shapes reached out with insubstantial fingers, pressing against the gauzy curtain of light, trying to claw through. The shimmery nothingness of the Veil stretched and bowed at their touch, but for the moment, it held. It did not take a sage like Bhujar to know that the alignment of the planets would happen in a matter of minutes.

Considering the Gem in her hand, Sheila looked back up at her daughter and licked her lips nervously. They were over a barrel and Venger knew it, and if he suspected them of stalling, they had all learned from long experience that his rage would be so great that there was no telling what he would do to Caitlin right before their very eyes. "O ... okay, Venger." Sheila finally said in her most placating tone. "I'll bring you the Gem ... but how can I be sure that you'll give me my daughter back?"

An unreadable expression flitted across Venger's pale features. "The simple truth is, I have no desire to keep this child any longer. But whether I give her back to you or simply incinerate her where she stands, it matters not to me. Now put your Weapons down and bring me the Gem, or this girl will not live to take another breath!"

Hank cast a very brief glance at Rob, then said cautiously, "All right, guys, you heard him. Put them down."

Standing next to Hank, a stunned Diana refused to lower her Staff, and even started to protest. "Hank, are you crazy all of the sudden?" she demanded.

"Do it!" Hank snapped. Diana was balking, and he could hear Eric and Presto whispering to each other in argumentative tones, but he had to make them cooperate for this to work! "Caitlin's depending on us, everyone!" he shouted, then slowly willed the arrow away and held his hands out to his sides. "Okay, Venger, don't hurt my daughter. I'm putting my Bow down, see?"

"Daddy?" Caitlin sniffled uncertainly, still not quite sure what was going on.

"It's okay, Katie," Hank assured. "Auntie Diana and everyone else are going to put their things down nice and slow, and this will all be over in just a few minutes, okay?"

Hank very slowly bent down, making no sudden moves as he lowered his Weapon towards the floor, much to Venger's smug satisfaction. Diana blinked in confusion and looked at Rahmoud, who gave her a simple nod of encouragement as he slowly bent to place his Scimitar on the floor. Sheila fumbled with the clasp on her cape; nerves seemed to have reduced her fingers to a worthless, shaky mess. On the other hand, across the room to Venger's right, Rob bent over and set his Club down almost too quickly.

**O.O.O**

When, long ago, this stately palace had fallen into abandonment and disrepair, thousands of years of neglect caused the architecture to crumble and collapse in upon itself in some places. One such place was the roof of this great room. Before the fall of this civilization, the ceiling dazzled its viewers with a magnificent display of art and architecture. Now, the remains of the once-towering spires of this stately palace were visible through a gaping hole in the sandstone roof, and the rubble from the ceiling's collapse littered the floor below. It was next to an apple-sized chunk of this stony debris that Rob set his Club. In one smooth motion, he released his Weapon, scooped up this broken piece of sandstone, and palmed it as well as he could. He did his best to look nothing more than terribly concerned for his niece as Venger glanced in his direction a moment, assuring himself that despite his hasty movement, the troublesome Barbarian had cooperated with his command. Satisfied, Venger turned his attention back to the only thing that concerned him: the Gem of Shahvin.

Neither the Desert King, nor Diana, nor anyone else besides Terri, had seen the slight, almost imperceptible but highly significant glance that Hank had given Rob right before he'd ordered them all to put down their Weapons. And judging by the half-scared, half-anticipatory expression Terri couldn't quite erase from her face, Rob was pretty sure that one way or the other, she knew what he was planning.

Hank was still moving so slowly that he had not quite released the Bow from his grip, and Venger was watching in smug satisfaction. Sheila was still making a good show of having trouble with her clasp, while the others were now following Hank's lead, pretending they were lowering their Weapons in a way that was supposed to assure Venger they would make no sudden moves. No one but Terri was looking in Rob's direction.

Just as the Force of Evil uttered the words, "Excellent. You will now-" the Barbarian wound up and threw the strongest fastpitch of his entire high school baseball career.

Rob's aim couldn't have been better, and his movement was so swift that neither Venger nor Shadow Demon saw it coming. The stone cracked Venger squarely in the temple with a sickening thud, sending him staggering backwards with its unexpected force. Roaring in pain and fury, Venger reflexively dropped Caitlin's arm to clutch his injured head.

"CAITLIN! RUN!" Hank shouted as he whipped up the Bow that, due to his deliberately slow movements, he had not quite released from his grasp. Desperate to save his daughter before the Force of Evil could recover and see that his plans had suddenly gone awry, Hank fired round after round at Venger to push him back even farther away from his child.

Pandemonium erupted in an instant. Caitlin screamed and ran; Sheila screamed; Venger roared and his magical power crackled and flashed in response; then Eric screamed for good measure. Boldly brandished Khadisian steel flashed in the light of the explosive projectiles that launched back and forth, accentuated by the twang-hiss of crossbow archers firing their bolts.

Rob taunted, "STRRRRIIIIIIKE! YOU'RE OUT!" at Venger loudly enough that Presto's incantation was lost in the din, but the dozen or so rubber bullets that the Magician conjured made their rapid-fire presence more than known as they pummeled the Dark Lord. Somewhere in the middle of this, Sheila threw her Cloak's hood on and disappeared.

"FOOLS!" Venger bellowed, raising his arms suddenly as his monstrous wings spread like a hooded cobra ready to strike. The bolts, bullets and energy arrows that had assaulted him a moment ago now bounced harmlessly away without even touching him. "I WILL HAVE THAT GEM!"

As the Force of Evil roared, the floor rumbled furiously in response, quaking as if Rob had just struck a blow with his Club. But the Barbarian had done no such thing, and wildly flailed his arms to keep his balance as the ground shifted violently.

"YOU WILL GIVE IT TO ME NOW!" The floor's upheavals intensified as Venger's shout grew in wrathfulness, and in moments, all except for Venger himself were pitched off their feet. "OR ELSE NONE OF YOU WILL LEAVE THIS PLACE ALIVE!"

A burst from Venger's outstretched hand struck the desert warrior named Hasan. The blast was not solid, but it hit the man in the arm, burning his sleeve and charring the flesh beneath. He screamed, clutching his wound, but Venger had already moved on to another target and did not deign finish him off.

Diana's athletic grace helped her keep her footing longer than the others, so that not only did she see Venger blast Rahmoud's soldier, she could tell that the next shot was intended for her. But even she could not maintain her balance on this wild ride forever. So the best thing to do was roll with it. Throwing herself backwards just as Venger took aim at her, she barely avoided being fried by landing a backwards one-handed flip which became a controlled tumble that brought her to safety behind one of the larger chunks that had fallen from the ceiling. She came up smelling of charred hair: The blast had been so close that her fur boots were singed.

But disaster had already struck.

**O.O.O**

Invisibility offered no safety in an earthquake. Sheila had been thrown off her feet before managing to take even two steps. When the Thief hit the ground hard, the hood of her Cloak flung back, leaving her visible again. Worse, she'd lost her grip in the fall, and the Gem had rolled from her shocked fingers.

_Oh, no!_ she thought in a panic, sitting up and looking around frantically. The floor still lurched and rolled, tossing the debris and rubble erratically. The darkened gem almost impossible to spot amongst it. _Where is it?! I've got to find it before Venger does!_

So desperately searching for the Gem, Sheila never realized she was once again visible. She barely even heard the scream when Hasan was struck by Venger's burning magic, and never looked up to see Diana's acrobatic escape from the same fate. At that moment her eyes finally fell on the Gem, which had rolled about five yards to her right. She was about to dive for it and stuff it back in her pouch, when a cry behind her nearly stopped her heart.

"MOMMYYYYY!"

Aghast, Sheila twisted around to see that though Caitlin had run away from Venger when she had the chance, the girl had been thrown to the ground by the rumbling floor just like everyone else. Caitlin was too scared to get back up. And to Sheila's utter horror, Venger was grinning as he took aim to incinerate her daughter.

Sheila barely even gave the Gem of Shahvin another thought. She made her choice, lurched to her feet, and ran. "It's all right, baby!" Sheila cried, throwing herself on top of her daughter and bracing to take the brunt of the blast. "Mommy's got you!"

But the blast that Sheila expected to burn a hole in her back didn't come. Gritting her teeth and hugging her child tight, she felt nothing. Nothing except, perhaps, that the floor had stopped lurching just as suddenly as it had begun. A sudden silence, like a collective gasp of horror, let her know something had gone very wrong.

As she cautiously peeked her eyes open, the sound of her husband's voice, low and dangerous, told her everything. "Put it down, Venger. Now!"

Holding Caitlin tight, Sheila scrambled to her feet and saw that the split-second decision to save her daughter was not without consequences. When she had run to protect her Caitlin, Shadow Demon had darted forward to seize the Gem she had left behind. And now the Force of Evil laughed in the face of the glowing Weapons aimed at him, as his servant placed the darkly shining prize in his clawed hand.

"Or you will do what?" Venger mocked, admiring the Gem not for its obsidian beauty, but for the ultimate power it would give him. "It is time. You will hinder me no longer." He turned to face the Veil, which had grown larger than a movie theater, showing hundreds of faceless souls screaming silently as they tried to reach through the screen. "The Realm will fall. City by city, kingdom by kingdom. _They_ are eager to do my bidding."

Recognizing the moment that Venger usually went into a smugly triumphant victory speech, Diana sprinted forward and used her Staff to vault feet-first at his back at the sound of those condescending words. But her noble effort to knock Venger off balance ended abruptly when her singed boots struck an invisible force field around him, the same one that had repelled the arrows, bullets, and everything else fired at him a moment ago. Nothing was going to reach him now.

Venger barely cast Diana a glance as she hit the ground and rolled to soften the impact. "I shall deal with you momentarily, Acrobat," he sneered as if she was nothing more than a mangy cur nipping at his heels. Turning to face Presto and Eric, who were still standing their ground between him and the Veil despite the fact that they were both visibly shaking, he commanded, "Out of my way, fools!"

Eric gulped, and braced his stance behind his glowing Shield while sweat trickled down his temple. Presto, behind the Shield's protective field, held his shaking fingers over his glowing Hat and squeaked, "No way."

"Do not delude yourselves," Venger scowled. "Your pathetic Shield cannot stop me. Observe."

A surge of energy charged the room, like a buildup of static that made the hair on the back of Sheila's neck stand on end. Venger paused for only a moment, waiting expectantly as he held the gemstone out at eye level, until a painfully bright beam of clear light, at first no bigger than an olive, lanced through the center of the milky glow of the Veil.

The bright light shining through the Veil struck the Gem ... or perhaps it was luminous glow of the Gem that reached out to the Veil, slicing through the field generated by Eric's Shield as if it were thin air.

"Is time!" Bhujar said frantically, gesturing wildly in what might have been a ward of protection. He seemed to be preparing for the worst. "Is time when all is aligned!"

"Yeah," replied Terri, just as frantically looking around for some sign of hope. "This is the time when Caitlin's supposed to hold the Gem!"

"SILENCE!" Venger shouted, but his face was ecstatic as the darkness of the Gem faded away in the intense light, shining once again like the diamond that Rahmoud had given Sheila four years ago. The Veil would open in a moment. "Shahvin has come!"

A beat or two passed in resigned, heavy silence. They'd come this far, only to fail at the last minute. Though Caitlin was momentarily safe, Venger was going to unleash the cruelest spirits of the Dead upon the Realm, and they were out of tricks to stop him.

**O.O.O**

Hank was about to fire an arrow into the opening Veil, on the slim chance that it might have the effect of sealing it up again. But then, surprisingly, Caitlin's little voice broke the dreadful silence.

Frightened, and with scraped hands and knees still stinging from her fall, she had been sniffling quietly in her mother's arms as Sheila watched Venger's success with a sinking heart. But when Caitlin finally dried her eyes and looked up, she noticed what that mean man with the big wings was holding in his hand. It made her mad to see it.

"That's Mommy's!" she shouted angrily at Venger, recognizing the shining Gem as the pretty sparkly thing that her mother always had on her keychain. That bad man must have stolen it! "Give it back!"

"You will be the first to be silenced, child!" Venger snapped.

"I said give it back!" Caitlin screeched at the nasty bully who had stolen her mommy's sparkly thing and was now laughing about it. "You give it back now!" And when the bad man still didn't comply, she reached out and took it away from him.

From halfway across the room, nowhere near Venger, she simply took the Gem from his grasp.

"What the _HELL_?" Sheila blurted when the Gem literally disappeared from Venger's fingers, only to rematerialize in her daughter's hand half a second later.

"WHAT?" Venger roared, half-shocked, half-furious when the light abruptly faded and he saw that his hands were empty.

Rahmoud's bearded jaw dropped at the sudden turn of events, and then, in the beat of dumbfounded silence, he did the most incongruous thing. He laughed. And laughed some more. The only words he managed through his mirth were, "Of course! Of course!"

**O.O.O**

Venger found nothing humorous in the matter. The Gem was gone! The alignment would last for only a few seconds longer! If he did not have it back, the Veil would close in less than a minute and he would not be able to release the souls of the Dead!

The spirits trapped by the Veil screamed and clawed silently as he whirled around, fire glowing in his eyes and a spell glowing around his fingertips. The Gem! There it was! In the hands of that ... _that child!_

The whole series of events took a little more than a second, but left nearly everyone staring in mindless surprise. Furious, Venger raised his hands to blast both mother and daughter at the same moment, but the Acrobat had recovered the same instant as he. Screaming, "Sheila! GO!" the Acrobat threw her Staff with a mighty heave.

Pure shock at so inexplicably losing the Gem had made Venger forget his force barrier, and the Staff, spinning like a propeller, struck his outstretched wrist, knocking his hand to the side and causing his blast to go wide. With a scream at the near miss, the Thief pulled her hood up, disappeared with her daughter and the Gem still in her arms, and ran.

Venger fired another round of magic missiles, but snarled to realize that the Thief was smarter than to run in the obvious direction. His blasts struck nothing but the wall beyond.

"Let him have it!" the Ranger shouted then, and before Venger could recover and raise his defenses again, he was hammered with another volley of arrows, bolts, and unidentified things from the Magician's hat that stung like a thousand teeth.

"I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!" Venger suddenly shouted, and in that instant he was able to shrug off the projectiles and magically block an attack from Rob, who had charged at him with a wild shout and Club raised high. It had only taken him a moment to recover his wits, but his fury had not abated. "I WILL ..."

Venger's abrupt silence caused everyone to pause uncertainly and turn in the same direction he was looking. The light from the Veil that had illuminated the room, despite the darkness that had fallen with the setting of the suns, had begun to dissipate. The Veil, so bright just a moment ago, was fading.

"Is over!" the sage Bhujar suddenly exclaimed. "The planets pass their alignment! Shahvin is over!"

"Holy crap, it's closing!" the Cavalier laughed then, pointing at the misty barrier between the worlds. The glow was diminishing, and behind it, the humanoid shapes were again becoming nothing more than indistinct shadows. "We did it!"

"Vengeance shall be mine," Venger said in a low, overly-calm voice that was more threatening than when he had been shouting. The last light of the Veil was extinguished. He had lost. The Gem was gone from his reach for just a crucial moment, and in those seconds, the Veil had closed. His Master would be displeased at this turn of fortune. The only pleasure Venger could take was in making those who had foiled him pay dearly. There was no hurry now; the time of Shahvin had passed and there was no reclaiming it. He had all the time he wished to draw out their agony, slowly, mercilessly, until his defeat had been avenged. "You will all suffer greatly for this."

As if in answer, from somewhere outside there was a sharp, shrill scream, joined almost instantly by one of even higher pitch. Just as abruptly as they had started, they were cut short.

There was no mistaking the shrieking voices. They had belonged to Sheila and Caitlin.

"Oh, my God!" the Ranger gasped, but his visible panic turned to an expression of cold fury at Venger's mocking laugh.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SISTER?!" the Barbarian shouted.

"Ah," Venger crowed. "It would seem their fates of your sister and her intolerable brat have been determined by something so base as flesh-eating slugs. How ignoble! But envy them their quick demise, for yours shall not be so mercifully brief!"

Before anyone could react to his gloating words, a figure ran wildly into the room, gesturing emphatically in the direction from which he had come. It was Masrur, who had abandoned his watch over the group's horses and was now blurting something in frantic Khadisian as he pointed urgently outside.

Venger frowned, annoyed that he did not understand the language. He would have liked to hear the details of the Thief's fate from this unexpected witness. But to him, the words were irritatingly incomprehensible, so he roared, "SILENCE THAT MAN!"

"SILENCE YOURSELF!" Rahmoud shouted back with such vehemence that Venger was momentarily taken aback. He and his men, a solid bank of scimitars and crossbows, advanced fearlessly towards him. A very confident smirk settled on the Desert King's features as he addressed the Dark Lord, "We will not stand idly by wasting our precious time listening to threats you cannot possibly carry out!"

Venger thought there might be some significance to the way the Dreamer's eyes suddenly widened in surprise, and how she turned her head to stare in the direction from which the scream had come. But since she made no other moves, Venger paid her no mind. Instead, in sheer disbelief of the Desert King's boldness, he laughed. "You do not intimidate me, old man!"

"No," Rahmoud agreed. "But perhaps this will! _ALOLATA!_"

At Rahmoud's command, a sudden, wordless shout went up in the connecting foyer, like the screaming in the stands of a gladiatorial bout. In that instant, literally hundreds of armed and furious Khadisians poured into the room. Their scimitars glinted in the light of their torches, and bows and crossbows launched volley after volley over the heads of the startled Outworlders, striking the even more startled Force of Evil.

Though Venger was too shocked to react immediately, Shadow Demon was most certainly not stunned into inaction. He disappeared in a heartbeat.

"As I said, Dark One," Rahmoud laughed, watching Venger's servant so quickly turn tail and abandon his Master. They'd managed to gain the element of surprise in a remarkable way, and the King knew to press his advantage. "You cannot stand against us all together!"

Regaining his composure, Venger glared at his hundreds of unexpected opponents with a furious light in his eyes. Where had they come from? Shadow Demon had reported that the Outworlders traveled across the desert with a laughably small complement of Khadisian warriors. How this sudden army had materialized was beyond him. Shadow Demon would pay for this grave error. No wonder the coward had fled.

They were not all swordsmen and archers; Venger could tell by the colors of the robes they wore that several dozen magicians were mixed into this Khadisian ambush. He was not been prepared to face so many adversaries. But prepared or not, he knew he had to answer their challenge, and he did so with a sneer as he raised his arms above his head. "I shall not have to stand against you! Not when you shall fall beneath the very sands that you love so well!"

**O.O.O**

Chunks suddenly falling from the ceiling told them what Venger was doing long before anyone noticed the walls beginning to buckle. "He's caving the place in!" Diana shouted unnecessarily. Stop him!"

Hank fired an arrow at the same moment that a precisely focused jet of blue flame roared from the hands of one of Rahmoud's magicians, but they both missed their target. A cloud of reddish smoke billowed up from the floor, surrounding Venger's laughing, menacing form just as the flaming projectiles would have struck home, and then cleared as quickly as it had come. Venger was gone.

"Go! GO!" Eric shouted as this happened, holding his Shield above his head as dust mixed with large chunks of stone rained down on them. Cracks were visibly splitting the old walls, giving the stone and worn plaster the impetus they finally needed to collapse after so many centuries of standing amidst the city's desolation. With his Shield charged and glowing, Eric willed its force to expand as much as possible, but even he doubted its ability to protect so many people if the entire roof came tumbling down. "Move it! I don't think I can hold it if it goes!"

Rahmoud didn't even need to translate for his people who did not speak Common. The rocks falling from the ceiling, striking some but so far causing only minor injuries, told them everything they needed to know.

Venger was gone, the Veil was closed, they had done what they had come to do. At this point, Eric saw no shame in running. And run they did. It was a miracle that no one got trampled in the bottleneck of crowding through the archway to the foyer, even more so that no one slipped and fell on the wet floor or the slime trails where Presto had rained saltwater on the slug creatures.

A rumble ahead of the fleeing crowd cut their escape short when the great archway leading to the marble steps outside suddenly collapsed from the stress. A choking cloud of dust billowed over them, but even before it settled, it was clear in the flickering torchlight that their route was blocked.

"Quick!" Diana shouted, gesturing for their small army to turn back. "We've got to find another way out!"

"Not on your life!" Rob shouted before confusion or panic could break loose. "We're going out the same way we came in! YEAAAAAAAAHHH!"

The massive blow that Rob struck with his Club made the already buckling walls fracture that much faster. But with an explosion of outward thrust, the rubble blocking their way cleared in a dusty shower of pebbles and gravel.

"I've got it! Go!" Eric commanded, crowding his way to the front. He was not making a panicked escape, though, for he stopped in the remains of the crumbling archway and lifted his Shield. "I think this will hold!" he shouted, gesturing for everyone to run while he gave the dangerous structure as much stability as he could muster. Bracing his legs and his back, he added, "But even I can't hold it forever! So move it, already!"


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

By sheer luck, divine intervention, or some combination of the two, the Cavalier was able to hold the collapse in check long enough for everyone to make it through in relative safety. Only when he was absolutely sure that everyone else was clear and he was definitely the last one out, Eric released the will flowing into his Shield and ran down the steps with a wild scream that echoed across the desert for miles. An angry swell of dust and debris pursued him as the walls of this once venerable building succumbed to their age and Venger's desire to crush his adversaries. But somehow he made it, though he did not stop running until he was safely behind Diana, who had paused just long enough to watch the collapse of the magnificent ruins before turning to more important matters.

Some of the Khadisians had been injured in the falling debris, or by the attacks of Venger or the slug creatures. Fortune had favored them, though: None of the wounds seemed to be life-threatening, and the Khadisian sages seemed more than capable of caring for their wounded. Terri had taken a blow to her shoulder from a falling shingle, but it was not bleeding and she did no more than rub it occasionally. Rob was taking care of her; she would be all right. This was not the important matter that worried everyone now.

That matter was being voiced loudly by Hank, who had waded through the crowd until he could find Masrur. Desperately grabbing the man by his open tunic, he demanded in a voice rising with panic, "What happened to Sheila? WHAT HAPPENED?"

Masrur did not answer right away; he was only semi-literate in Common and would have had a difficult time finding the right words under any circumstances, but with the one that the King called his eldest son shaking him and shouting in his face, he was only growing more flustered by the moment.

"And Caitlin?" Hank demanded even more fervently when the answers did not immediately come. "We heard them scream! What happened? Dammit, where are they?"

"We're ... uh ... right here," came a sheepish voice, followed by a soft violet glow behind a three-foot high, squared-off stone that was probably once part of a house's outer wall. Where a moment ago there had been nothing but the backdrop of ruins, Sheila suddenly appeared, unharmed, with Caitlin still held tight in her arms. "And we're both okay."

Hank immediately released Masrur's tunic, much to Masrur's visible relief, and ran to his wife and child, so overcome that he actually dropped his Bow as he threw his arms around them both. "My God, you're all right!" he almost sobbed. "You're both okay, thank God ..." he repeated, holding them tight and not caring who saw the tears of relief streaming down his face. "I thought something happened to you, but … but everything's all right!"

Against all the odds, and in the most unexpected way, everything had indeed turned out all right. In an inexplicable twist of fate, Venger had been defeated and, most importantly, Caitlin had safely returned to them. At the moment, nothing else mattered.

Diana had also rushed over when Sheila reappeared, and since it was clear that no one was going to be able to separate Hank and Sheila without a crowbar, she threw her arms around all of them, also unable to find words to say how thankful she was that everything was at last right once again. Before Hank could even register what had happened, he, Sheila, and Caitlin were in the middle of a massive group hug from all their friends.

Once every emotion they felt was expressed without anyone ever having to say a word, the hug released just enough for Diana to ask Sheila, "What the Hell just happened? We heard you scream when you ran out of the building. We thought sure you were a goner, like the slugs had got you and Caitlin or something. Venger even said they did!"

"Uh, well, that's all that's left of the slugs," Sheila said with an embarrassed grin, nodding around her to a few blobbish silhouettes lying motionless in the growing dusk. "I think Rahmoud's back-up soldiers finished off all the ones we injured before Caitlin and I got out the front door."

Diana's eyebrows knotted in mild confusion. "Well, then, why did you scream?"

Again, that sheepish smile. Then Sheila pointed to the small army of Khadisians, all still holding their scimitars, bows, and torches ready, not yet convinced that Venger was indeed gone from this place. "You try running headlong into three hundred of those guys, all looking _really_ ticked off, when you're scared half to death to begin with, and see what kind of sound YOU make!"

"They scared me!" Caitlin added as if this had been a worse than the two days she'd spent locked in the dark cell in Venger's dungeon.

"I'll bet they did," Hank agreed, studying his daughter carefully. She seemed all right, maybe a little pale, but Venger had upheld his word and not harmed her. Then his eyes fell on the Gem of Shahvin, still clutched in her little hands. The other questions that he had about their unexpected reinforcements could wait. The fate of the Realm had been spared because Caitlin had managed to take the Gem from Venger at just the right moment. But she hadn't just taken the Gem. It was more like she had _teleported_ the Gem from his hand into hers. And that was impossible. Wasn't it?

"Katie, honey," he began, at a complete loss as to how he should approach this. "Daddy has a question, okay?"

Caitlin looked up at him with wide eyes and a slightly guilty expression of feigned innocence, one of a child pretending she had done nothing wrong in order to keep herself out of trouble. "When you took the Gem - uh, I mean Mommy's keychain - from Venger, how did you do it?"

Here was the question that everyone was waiting to be answered. Even Rahmoud and those amongst the original group of Khadisians who had seen the inexplicable feat crowded forward to hear Caitlin's explanation.

"Um ..." Caitlin began after thinking so hard about her daddy's question that her face scrunched up in concentration. Finally she answered, "I dunno. I just did, 'cause he was mean and he stoled it!"

"You mean you don't know how you did it?" Sheila asked, so disappointed that she almost deflated. "Caitlin, I saw you. Or at least I saw the Gem – my keychain – disappear out of his hand and just appear in yours! Are you sure you don't know how you did it?"

"Nuh-uh," Caitlin answered honestly

"But Caitlin," Sheila persisted, still trying to get at least a hint from her daughter. They could piece the rest of it together later if Caitlin couldn't tell them everything. "How long have you been able to do that? Take things like that, I mean?"

Looking warily at everyone staring at her, Caitlin clearly didn't understand what the big deal was. "Um, since for always."

"But ..." Sheila began, but trailed off and looked helplessly at her husband when words failed her. Unfortunately, he and everyone else were as stumped as she.

_Almost_ everyone else. Right then, to the startlement of almost everybody listening, Rahmoud began laughing. It was that same belly-laugh as when they had witnessed Caitlin take the Gem from Venger's dumbfounded hand in the first place. "There, you see!" he almost howled, finding something to be either very humorous or very ironic. "What did your old Rahmoud tell you?"

Surprised, Caitlin shrank down in her mother's arms, momentarily confused by this strange man's outburst. But as the torchlight flickered in the growing darkness, she was able to get a good look at Rahmoud's face as he laughed, and suddenly she brightened. "Grandpa!" she squealed, reaching out her arms in excitement.

"Ah, yes, my little Cait-a-lin!" Rahmoud exclaimed, taking the girl from her mother's arms, though after this evening's near-disasters, it was clear that Sheila was reluctant to let her go. "You would never forget your old Rahmoud, who told you silly stories and lavished you with treats when Mama and Papa were not looking! I had wondered often how it could come to pass that a little girl of but eighteen months was found playing with the great and bejeweled Crown of Silver Stars, worth a kingdom's ransom, even though it had been locked and sealed safely in its case and every servant swore upon the Holy Scrolls that no one had given this treasure to her! I see now, my little one, that you must have been dazzled by its beauty and so took it for yourself, did you not?"

Whatever incident Rahmoud was referring to, apparently it was a little too long ago for Caitlin to remember at all. "Um, I dunno," she answered as best she could.

"Whoa, Rahmoud, ol' pal," Eric interrupted, holding up his hand to get a word in. "Why am I always the last to get an explanation whenever you're around? Just what are you talking about, already?"

Eric frowned in frustration when Rahmoud gave that loud, heartfelt belly-laugh again, but before anyone could object to his unexplained mirth, the Desert King got hold of himself enough to explain, "What did I say but a night ago, my children? Did your Rahmoud not tell you that Dungeon Master's pupils were all possessed of some magic? I am a great fool that I never before saw such a possibility!"

Bouncing the giggling Caitlin in his arms, he looked at his 'granddaughter' with a mixture of pride and awe before continuing, "If a child's mother is known to have some magic flowing in her veins," he nodded to Sheila, "and that child's father also has a spark of magic smoldering in his soul," he nodded to Hank, "then why should we not think their precious child would command magic of her own?"

The reasoning left everyone speechless, but what they'd witnessed could not be denied. Of course, none of them had truly realized they themselves possessed magic until their return to the Realm. But now that Rahmoud had said it, all the times that Caitlin had inexplicably turned up with items like Aladdin dolls and teachers' scarves and cookies - and lizard men's keys, had they known of the incident - suddenly made a great deal of sense.

"You mean ..." Sheila finally said slowly, taking her daughter back from Rahmoud. "Katie, sweetheart, if you could do this all along, how come you never let us know before?"

"Um ... 'cause it's stealing," Caitlin answered sheepishly. Biting her lower lip, she looked like she knew she was in trouble and was about to get grounded from video games for a week.

"Stealing?" Sheila repeated, looking at Hank in confusion. Hank only shrugged and glanced at Eric, who scratched his head and turned to Presto, who shook his head helplessly and looked to Diana, who waved her spread fingers, admitting she was stumped, and turned to Rob who threw up his hands in confusion and glanced at Terri, who looked like she was suddenly making sense out of a few dreamed memories but declined to comment.

Finally, the Thief reasoned, "Well, I guess ... maybe at some point ... maybe she must have, I don't know, taken something she wasn't supposed to have, and she must have gotten caught, and got punished and got a lecture about stealing. But it must have made a bigger impression on her than it did on me, because I sure don't remember what we could have said that made her hide it like this!"

"Well, maybe it doesn't really matter," Diana said philosophically. "I'm just as surprised as you guys, but what counts is that we know she can do it _now_. And, well, look around. We're sure in the right place to teach her how to use it properly, aren't we?"

"Use it properly?" Eric interrupted with an eager grin. His eyes were alight with the possibilities. "Just give me a shot here! Okay, kiddo," he addressed Caitlin, "it looks like if you just think about getting something you see that you really want, it disappears from where it is and turns up in your hand, right?"

Caitlin looked uncertainly from Eric to her mother, not certain if answering his question was going to get her in trouble or not. But eventually took a chance, based mostly on the fact that Uncle Eric had helped her wiggle out of a little naughtiness once or twice before. "Um, yeah," she decided to say. "Like when I saw that the mean man stoled Mommy's sparkly thing and I wanted to take it back so I took it!"

"Wow, that's great!" Eric told her. "That's so cool that you can do that! Okay, so the next time me and Uncle Presto take you to the movies, and we walk by the concession stand, you just think about how much you want a package of Milk Duds and Junior Mints and ..."

"ER-RIC!" his friends chorused in perfect unison.

"What?" Eric asked so innocently that anyone with a good imagination could see a little gold halo glowing over his head. "Can't blame a guy for trying, can you?"

Grabbing Eric's overtunic, Hank pulled him up until they were face to face and said in a mock-threatening tone, "I don't care if her mother is our resident Thief, we are _not_ teaching my daughter to be a shoplifter, got it?"

"Hey, if you got it, flaunt it!" Eric responded with a grin.

**O.O.O**

While this exchange occurred, Terri slipped through the crowd to speak to Rahmoud. As she gently pushed past the Khadisian people, she noticed that many were on edge, as if they had no wish to remain here now that their work had been done. Judging by what Rahmoud had said earlier, Terri guessed, correctly, that most of them believed this place to be cursed.

"Excuse me," she said when she finally reached Rahmoud's side, "but can you explain something to me?"

"If the gods above grant me the knowledge and the words to answer your question," the King said with a bow, "then I shall ... how do you say ... give it my best shot?"

Terri grinned at that. She was getting used to the way Rahmoud liked to sprinkle his conversation with colloquialisms he'd learned over the years, from her friends and apparently from a few other of Dungeon Master's pupils that he'd met in the past as well. He just picked some rather odd moments to throw in an Earth expression. But at least he wasn't as edgy as most of his people, and that put Terri at ease. "These guys," she said, with an all-encompassing gesture that included the whole of the Khadisian army, and their several hundred horses that milled about nervously, spooked by the sudden collapse of the building. "They were the ones following us all day, they were the ones kicking up that dust cloud that had us so worried, right? And ... you summoned them, didn't you? I can see it now." Tapping her temple significantly, she postulated, "When you sent those riders back to Khadish when we met up at that first oasis, you said you sent them back because fewer people could travel faster. But that's not what happened. You sent them back to get help."

"Indeed, O Wise One, beloved of my son Rrrrrrob!" Rahmoud nodded proudly, placing his hands on his hips and admitting with a toss of his turbaned head, "I am ... 'guilty as charged,' am I not?

"I guess so!" Terri laughed. "But why didn't you tell us? First you said it was a caravan. Then you and Bhujar had us convinced it was Venger. Then you tried to tell us it wasn't, and the way you were acting had us really freaking out there, when you knew the whole time that help was on the way!"

A slight frown creased Rahmoud's brow as he rubbed his bearded chin thoughtfully. "If, by 'freaking out,' you mean that you were most terribly worried, then I offer my humble apologies. But it is to the sharp eyes of my good Bhujar that I attribute my reluctance to inform you of the truth, my child. For it was he who witnessed a shadow, a shadow that moved too swiftly to be cast by the suns, a shadow with eyes and fingers, but not cast by any human's body. My child, Venger's spy and servant the Shadow Demon followed us through much of this journey."

Terri jumped at this, looking nervously around in the darkness. The first time she'd laid eyes on Shadow Demon was today, inside the derelict palace, but she knew the reputation of Venger's insidious spy from her friends. If he had been following them all this time, was he here now, still spying on them to the end?

Rahmoud seemed less concerned by that possibility than Terri. With nothing at risk now, no plans to keep secret, everyone was free to speak. "Had I told you that help swiftly followed, then the Dark Lord would have thus known of it minutes after you did. No, my child, we needed that surprise. I have long suspected, and now confirmed, that neither that creature of shadow nor his Master speaks the tongue of my people, and so in that speech I made my plans. Knowing that my soldiers sought us in the vastness of the desert, we signaled our progress with fire and smoke, tarrying as long as we could to let their strong horses close the distance."

At that, Terri nodded. Now she was beginning to understand why the fire had been built so high and bright when they camped at the oasis, why they had waited longer than necessary before riding the next morning, and why the fire had been put out so smokily. It wasn't to guard against the nocturnal creatures of the desert at all. "That was really smart," she admitted, seeing how everything fit together. "So when whatshisname, Masrur, came running in shouting, none of us understood what he was saying, so we all thought something had happened to Sheila because of her scream. So did Venger, and that was the important part."

"Indeed," Rahmoud agreed, "the brave Masrur had been left to await my reinforcements and swiftly encourage them to put aside their superstitions of this place. At the moment of which you speak, he had entered to inform me that my soldiers had indeed arrived, that they were armed and ready to kick Venger's ... ah ... that they were very angry that Venger had stolen an innocent child and wished to bring about his immediate defeat."

Terri laughed at the obvious way Rahmoud danced around the Earth expression that he had decided it was better not to use. "Well, fair enough," she agreed.

Just then, one of the Khadisians who had appeared with the group of reinforcements approached hurriedly and bowed to one knee before his King. Terri, of course, did not understand a word he spoke, but whatever he said in his native language caused Rahmoud to glance over his shoulder in surprise. "Can this be so?" the King asked with a tone of awe.

"What?" Terri asked, wondering if she should be worried or not. Rahmoud didn't seem unduly concerned, if his expression was any indication. On the contrary, he looked rather amazed. "Is something happening?"

"I caught some of that," Presto's voice interrupted as the Wizard approached. His attention had been drawn by the urgent way the man had approached and spoken to Rahmoud. "I'm not exactly fluent any more, but I'm starting to remember, you know, bits and pieces. He said something about 'fresh water' and a 'fountain ...' or maybe it was 'oasis,' I can't remember which word's which. Are we out of water or something? Is he saying we should go find an oasis and stock up?"

"No, my son," Rahmoud shook his head. "The worthy Yafra tells us that the oasis has perhaps come to us."

"Ooookayyyy, I give up," Presto shrugged. "What's that supposed to mean? I didn't see any water when we came through here earlier. This place is as dry as a ... er ... desert," he finished lamely.

"Verily, there was none," Rahmoud agreed. Then, he raised his voice, shouting to his people who quickly hushed to hear their King. He too used the words for 'fresh water' and 'oasis/fountain,' and even if none of the Outworlders understood fluently, the gist of it was good news, judging by the surprised, then pleased, and even relieved expressions that crossed the Khadisian faces. A buzz of whispers rippled through the crowd, and the tone of it was happy, even excited.

"Come, my children, come and see!" Rahmoud addressed the Outworlders in Common then. Indicating that his soldier lead the way, he explained, "What Yafra tells your old Rahmoud is that the crumbling fountains that quenched the thirst of this once-great city before running dry in the cataclysm that destroyed all life here, have begun to flow once more! The fresh waters must have begun to run but scarce minutes ago, and that, perhaps, was the moment of the closing of the Veil, no?"

Just a few blocks away from the ancient marble steps of the now-fallen palace lay the crumbled remains of the centerpiece of the grand, tiled public square. Long ago, this pile of worn rubble comprised a fountain vast in size and lavish in exquisite detail. That it was once a fountain was unmistakable, for in the torchlight, clear rivulets of fresh water bubbled up and glistened as they flowed into puddles around the broken base. The sight was almost unbelievable. Water, the symbol of life, had returned to the City of the Dead.

"Is no more!" Bhujar announced with a laugh, kneeling by the broken fountain and dipping his fingers in the water to taste it. It was pure and fresh as the water that sprayed from the great alabaster fountains in the center of Khadish. "Curse upon these ruins, is no more!"

"Then we have done more than we had come to do!" Rahmoud announced with a proud smile. The sense of dread they had encountered upon entering this city now washing away with every trickle of water that flowed over the rocks. "My friends, my children, in this blessed hour, we are-"

"Mommy! Look!" Caitlin suddenly squealed, blithely interrupting the speech of a King and never once considering that there might be something wrong with this. Tugging Sheila's hand, she pointed beyond the fountain, just at the very edge of the light of the torches. "Chicken lizards!"

The sudden attention caused a commotion as four curious creatures, lizards the size of small dogs, but with very definite beaks and feathers, squawked in surprise and scrambled into the darkness. What they had come to investigate was uncertain, but the shy creatures clearly did not like it when all eyes fell on them.

"Well, look at that," Hank mused. The creatures that his daughter had spotted were the first close-up they'd had of the Lloks they'd occasionally sighted while crossing the desert. "When we got here, this place was absolutely dead. Now all of the sudden, we've got animals showing up. They must have sensed it's safe to come here now."

"Indeed! Indeed they have!" Rahmoud agreed. "Come! We shall camp here this night! And my friends, do not be surprised if you see water lilies growing in the fountain tomorrow, for the City of the Dead has begun its resurrection!"

**O.O.O**

Later that evening, when the tents were pitched and a meal of flat bread and dried meat was served, Caitlin became the center of attention as she sat on her father's lap telling everyone about her harrowing adventures in Venger's prison. Sheila quietly moved between those who had been wounded in Venger's attack, trying her hand at her newfound 'healing magic' with growing success in each attempt, but she listened carefully to every word her daughter said and even laughed out loud when Caitlin described throwing the bucket of water at the 'pigface man' who tried to scare her.

Eventually, Caitlin talked herself out, and was soon drowsing in her father's arms. Hank, Sheila, and most of the others decided it was a good time to turn in for the night themselves, for they had a long ride ahead of them tomorrow.

But as they were all heading for their tents, Eric paused to look into the darkness at the shadowy rubble where the palace had collapsed. Frowning, he scratched his head as if he was giving something heavy consideration. He was silently counting off a mental list on his fingers when Presto approached.

"Something the matter?" the Wizard asked curiously. Nothing seemed to be bothering the Cavalier, per se, but it wasn't always wise to leave Eric to figure out something on his own.

"Yeah," Eric answered thoughtfully. "How long were we in there altogether? Best guess?"

"Uh, well," Presto mused. It probably hadn't been nearly as long as it seemed. "It took us like five minutes to deal with the slugs, and I guess like about ten to deal with Venger, plus a little of our usual wandering around aimlessly until we figured out what to do, so I'd say no more than twenty minutes tops. Why?"

"That's gotta be some kind of record for us," Eric answered. A crooked grin spread across his features as he explained, "Twenty minutes. I mean, last time we were here it seems like every third building we went into ended up either collapsing or exploding, but I don't think we've ever brought one down in less than a half hour from the time we stepped inside!"

"Hey, not our fault this time!" Presto countered, responding to the humor in Eric's observation. "Venger pulled it down, not us!"

"Yeah, but the reputation's going to follow us, not him!" Eric laughed. "We're getting faster as we go!"

"Oh, but this is not so!" interrupted a voice, and a smiling Rahmoud walked up behind them to throw his arms around their shoulders. "My children, did you not destroy the clock tower of the Nightwalker in one minute? One very _long_ minute?"

All three of them laughed heartily. "Huh! When you put it that way, I guess we did!" Eric agreed.

"Come, my children," Rahmoud continued. "The night grows dark, and we must rest well for the journey tomorrow! In two days, we shall return to our beautiful Khadish! My Aiyesha has missed you and spoken often of you in your absence. She no doubt will enjoy hearing your stories of how quickly you destroyed this old palace. Will she not, eh, Master Eric?" he asked with a nudge and a wink in Eric's direction.

"Wha ..?" Eric stammered after a dumbfounded pause and a vaguely embarrassed glance in Presto's direction. "I ... uh ... yeah, I guess so."

"Eric!" Presto teased, staring over his glasses at his friend when he heard the Cavalier's verbal stumbling. "Are you blushing?"

"No, dummy, I just have a sunburn after all this riding in the desert."

"You are too blushing! Look, Rahmoud," Presto felt compelled to point out, "his face is so red, I can see it glowing in the dark!"

"It is not!"

"Verily, it is so!" Rahmoud laughed.

"Well, hey, Eric," Presto mused in mock-thoughtfulness, "I had no idea there was anything between you two, but at least you know she's not after your wallet like Little Miss Michelle van Waaah!"

"Shut up, you dork! Aiyesha's not … she … I mean I didn't ...I just ... used to make her laugh, is all!"

"Then how come you're blushing?" Presto asked seriously.

"That's 'cause you're an embarrassment to be around!" Eric snapped, marching away with his head held high. "So I'm taking my sunburn and going to bed! Good night!"

As soon as the Cavalier was out of sight, Presto and Rahmoud burst out laughing. "Okay, that was just funny!" Presto snickered. "Mean, but funny. And don't think I never noticed all the times you tried to set those two up before."

"Ah, but it is true," Rahmoud answered, wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes. "Whatever Master Eric may or may not think of what I do not admit to implying, my Aiyesha has missed you all and does speak of you fondly. How pleased she will be to see your faces once more! But please, you must tell me one thing, Master Presto."

"Sure," Presto answered, wondering about the sudden seriousness in Rahmoud's voice. "Anything you want to know. Just ask."

For a moment, Rahmoud looked in the direction that Eric had stalked off, mild confusion clearly readable in his dark eyes. Then he looked back to Presto and asked, "What is this word, 'dork'?"

Presto laughed out loud again, causing his glasses to slip down his nose once more. Pushing them back up, he said with a smile, "You know what, Rahmoud, I never thought I'd say this, but it's good to be home!"


	12. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

"Will this do?"

And suddenly, there they were, standing on a jutting promontory at the very edge of a steep cliff. The drop to the valley floor below was at least five hundred feet, and the cliff face and promontory perilously exposed to midair were composed of plain granite.

"This'll do fine," Presto assessed, glancing at Hank for confirmation.

"It's perfect," Hank agreed.

"Very well, then. This spot leads to "

"Don't tell us!" Hank interrupted. "We don't want to know. The only reason Venger found the Gem on Earth is because he knew where it went, or at least had a pretty good idea to begin with. If no one knows where it is, then if we're lucky, no one will ever have a clue where to start looking for it again."

"Are you sure that is necessary? If, as you say, water and life have returned to the City of the Dead, it is possible that the Veil has closed forever. I know some small bit about prophecies, and how important the wording can be. In this case, the Prophecy did not say that the Veil would reopen _every_ five thousand years."

"Well, that's true," Diana agreed. "But we don't want to take any chances."

"As you wish, my friends." There was a click, followed by a slight creak. "You may throw it in, now, Thief."

"And good riddance!" Sheila said, tossing the Gem of Shahvin into the dark, square hole at the bottom of the open treasure chest. "Thanks, Zandora," she said as the diminutive sorceress closed her Box. "I feel better already."

"Which means there's just one thing left to do," Hank added as he and Rob helped Zandora push the Box to away from the edge, back towards where the others stood. "Rahmoud, will you do us the honors?" he asked with a gesture towards the now-bare promontory.

"It will be my pleasure, my son," Rahmoud answered as he stepped towards the edge. He too had come along as Zandora had brought them here, in search of the perfect place to dispose of the Gem of Shahvin. Now that the Gem was locked and sealed in another dimension through Zandora's Box, they were going to take all the steps necessary to make sure that it could not return the same way. "So it was that my great ancestor, Hadarif the Steadfast, found the Gem and brought it into this world, so I, King Rahmoud, now banish it."

Drawing his Scimitar and holding it up for a moment to shine in the glinting light of the suns, Rahmoud struck it hard on the rocky ground beneath his feet. As the blade began to sing with magical soundwaves, he drove the point deep into the ground where the Box had sat moments before. The cliff trembled as the waves loosened fissures and aggravated tiny cracks in the granite. Soon, a wide crack opened up, splitting in two directions from Rahmoud's Scimitar. When he saw this fissure growing rapidly, the tremors now perpetuating themselves and intensifying as the rocks gave way, he withdrew the blade and hurried back to safety where the others stood. The edge of the precipice continued to crumble, shifting and lurching until, with a mighty roar, the entire promontory where the Box had opened a portal now collapsed to the valley floor.

"And that, as they say, is that!" Eric smiled, dusting off his hands as if he'd just done all the work himself.

"Indeed, it is," Zandora agreed. With that rocky outcropping destroyed, there would be no reaching the Gem through her Box any more, and the location she had chosen to send it would be quite inaccessible to Venger or any of his successors through any other means. "And now that you have accomplished this, what are your plans, my friends?"

"Well, the first thing we're going to do is get Caitlin off my leg!" Sheila said through gritted teeth. The collapse of the cliff face had so frightened the little girl that she had latched on to her mother's leg in terror, and was not about to let go. "I think she's cutting of my circulation! I can't feel my foot!"

As Hank and Diana bent down to pry Caitlin off, Presto answered Zandora, "Well, we're going to take a little trip and see if we can find ... a, um, friend of mine, Varla, and see if she wants to come back to Khadish with us. Then on the way back we're going to take a detour and go visit the Valley of the Unicorns. And then we heard that Dekkion is trying to rebuild the Order of the Celestial Knights, so we might try to find the Tower again just to, y'know, see how he's doing. Dungeon Master said he'd go on ahead and drop some hints to everyone that we're coming. After that, I dunno." He shrugged helplessly. In the rush to rescue Caitlin, there simply had not been a moment's thought given to the future, or the consequences they would have to face in willingly returning to the Realm. "I don't think we can manage full time adventuring and trying to find a way home like we used to before. We'll probably settle down in Khadish if it doesn't look like we're going to find a nice and easy way home while we're out on this trip."

Which, the Magician did not admit, was exactly what he was planning to do if there was any chance that Varla would return to Khadish with him. Whether his friends found that portal back to Earth didn't even matter, he was staying with Varla. It was what he now knew that he should have done all along.

"As you well know, I cannot help you now with finding a way back to your world," Zandora answered with a shake of her head. "The most I can do is return you to Khadish so you can prepare for your journey. Let us go now."

"We gonna go for another trip?" Caitlin suddenly squealed in excitement, bouncing up and down and clapping her little hands, her pigtails swinging in delight. How quickly she'd gotten over her fright when she realized they were going to go on another cool ride like they had when the funny lady brought them here.

"Yes, my dear, we are," Zandora answered with a smile, raising her old but nimble hands above her head. "Are you ready? Here we go!"

A silvery flash of magical energy engulfed them all. When it passed, the cliff stood empty, save for the tufts of grass and rock cress that blew gently in the soft breeze.

Flying in the distance, a curious bronze dragon saw the flash, but found nothing when she soared over to investigate. Those who had stood there moments ago had already rematerialized far away, in the exquisite palace of an exotic land they would all soon come to call home.

~Fin~


End file.
